Fatigue limit  The fatigue limit, also known as the endurance limit or fatigue strength, is the stress level below which an infinite number of loading cycles can be applied to a material without causing fatigue failure. Ferrous alloys and titanium alloys have a distinct limit. Other structural metals, such as aluminium and copper, do not have a distinct limit and will eventually fail even from small stress amplitudes. In these cases, the term endurance strength is used. Endurance strength is defined as the maximum value of completely reversed bending stress that a material can withstand for a finite number of cycles without a fatigue failure. The ASTM defines "fatigue strength", formula_1, as the value of stress at which failure occurs after formula_2 cycles, and "fatigue limit", formula_3, as the limiting value of stress at which failure occurs as formula_2" becomes very large. ASTM does not define "endurance limit", the stress value below which the material will withstand many load cycles, but implies that it is similar to fatigue limit. Some authors use "endurance limit", formula_5, for the stress below which failure never occurs, even for an indefinitely large number of loading cycles, as in the case of steel; and "fatigue limit" or "fatigue strength", formula_3, for the stress at which failure occurs after a specified number of loading cycles, such as 500 million, as in the case of aluminium. Other authors do not differentiate between the expressions even if they do differentiate between the two types of materials. Typical values of the limit (formula_5) for steels are 1/2 the ultimate tensile strength, to a maximum of . For iron, aluminium, and copper alloys, formula_5 is typically 0.4 times the ultimate tensile strength. Maximum typical values for irons are , aluminums , and coppers . Note that these values are for smooth "un-notched" test specimens. The endurance limit for notched specimens (and thus for many practical design situations) is significantly lower. For polymeric materials, the fatigue limit has been shown to reflect the intrinsic strength of the covalent bonds in polymer chains that must be ruptured in order to extend a crack. So long as other thermo chemical processes do not break the polymer chain (i.e. ageing or ozone attack), a polymer may operate indefinitely without crack growth when loads are kept below the intrinsic strength. The concept of fatigue limit, and thus standards based on a fatigue limit such as ISO 281:2007 rolling bearing lifetime prediction, remains controversial, at least in the US.