Low‐cycle fatigue of 316L stainless steel under proportional and nonproportional loadings

This paper discusses low‐cycle fatigue characteristics of 316L stainless steel under proportional and nonproportional loadings. Tension–torsion multiaxial low‐cycle fatigue tests were performed using five strain paths. Additional hardening was observed under nonproportional loadings and was more significant in tests with larger nonproportionality. Mises equivalent strain, Smith–Watson–Topper, Fatemi–Socie, Kandil–Brown–Miller and nonproportional strain parameters were applied to the experimental data to evaluate the multiaxial low‐cycle fatigue damage. The applicability of the damage laws to practical design was discussed.     

The effect of overload on the fatigue crack growth behaviour of 304 stainless steel in hydrogen

Fatigue crack growth (FCG) behaviour and its characteristics following tensile overloads were investigated for AISI 304 stainless steel in three different atmospheres; namely dry argon, moist air and hydrogen. The FCG tests were performed by MTS 810 servohydraulic machine. CT specimens were used for the tests and crack closure measurements were made using an extensometer. FCG rates of 304 stainless steel at both dry argon and moist air atmospheres have shown almost the same behaviour. In other words, the effect of moisture on FCG of this material is very small. However, in a hydrogen atmosphere, the material showed considerably higher crack growth rate in all regimes. In general, for all environments, the initial effect of overloads was to accelerate the FCG rate for a short distance (less than a mm) after which retardation occurred for a considerable amount of time. The main causes for retardation were found as crack blunting and a long reinitiation period for the fatigue crack. Regarding the environmental effect, the overload retardation was lowest in a hydrogen atmosphere. This low degree of retardation was explained by a hydrogen embrittlement mechanism. In a general sense, hydrogen may cause a different crack closure mechanism and hydrogen induced crack closure has come in to the picture. Scanning electron microscope and light microscope examinations agreed well with the above results.     

Corrosion fatigue behaviour of 304 stainless steel under proportional and non‐proportional multiaxial loading condition

Corrosion fatigue and electrochemical tests under proportional loading and non‐proportional loading were conducted on 304 stainless steel in 0.63 mol L^?1 NaCl solution at room temperature. Two biaxial loading paths were applied to study the effect of proportional loading and non‐proportional loading on corrosion fatigue behaviour. Surface and fractographic observations of multiaxial corrosion fatigue specimens were carried out by scanning electron microscopy. It was shown that proportional loading had a more significant effect on the occurrence of local corrosion compared with non‐proportional loading because the continuous rotation of the principal stress plane under non‐proportional loading inhibits the pit formation.     

Observations of fatigue crack behaviour in proton‐irradiated 304 stainless steel

Thermoelastic stress analysis (TSA) has been used to monitor fatigue crack growth in compact tension (CT) specimens, made from 304 grade austenitic stainless steel, that have been subject to proton irradiation. Several specimens had a 10 × 10 mm area ahead of a 1‐mm precrack irradiated with a 1.6 MeV proton beam up to 0.216C to 0.648C of accumulated charge prior to fatigue testing. Subsequently, specimens were loaded sinusoidally at 20 Hz with an R ratio of 0.5, and TSA data were collected both at the loading frequency and its second harmonic. Irradiation appears to cause an increase in the fatigue life, with a reduction in crack growth rate observed in the irradiated specimens compared with the unirradiated control specimens. Irradiation damage caused a moderately linear change in both the parameters of the Paris law with accumulated charge from the irradiation.     

A fracture mechanics analysis on the fatigue behaviour of cruciform joints of duplex stainless steel

The paper presents the results of an experimental and numerical study on the fatigue behaviour of cruciform load carrying joints made from the duplex stainless steel and failing from the weld root through the weld metal. Fatigue crack growth (FCG) data, obtained in specimens of the weld metal, are presented, as well as threshold data, both obtained for R= 0 and 0.5. The influence of stress ratio is discussed, and the FCGR results are compared with data for low carbon structural steels. S–N data were obtained in the joints, both for R= 0.05 and 0.5, and the fatigue cracking mechanisms were analysed in detail with the SEM. It was found that the cracks propagated very early in the lifetime of the joints, under mixed mode conditions (I + II), but the mode I component was found to be predominant over mode II. The geometries of the cracks were defined in detail from measurements taken in the fracture surfaces. A 2D FE analysis was carried out for the mixed mode inclined cracks obtained at the weld root, and the J‐integral formulations were obtained as a function of crack length and crack propagation angle. The values of the crack propagation angle, θ_i, were obtained for the J_max conditions, and it was found that, in the fatigue tests, the cracks propagated in directions very close to the predicted directions of maximum J. K_I and K_II formulations were obtained, and the K_I data were compared with the formulations given in the PD6493 (BS7910) document, and some differences were found. A more general formulation for K under mixed mode conditions was derived. The derived K solutions were applied to predict the fatigue lives of the joints under crack propagation, and an extremely good agreement was found with the experimental results obtained in the fatigue tests.     

Morphologies and characteristics of deformation induced martensite during tensile deformation of 304 LN stainless steel

The austenite γ (fcc) matrix of 304 LN stainless steel transforms readily to martensites (hcp) and ′ (bcc) on deformation. The formation and nucleation mechanism of deformation induced martensite (DIM) during tensile deformation of 304 LN stainless steel has been studied at various strain rates in room temperature. It is investigated that the enhancement of strain rates during tensile deformation promotes the early formation of DIM, while suppressing its saturation value at fracture. Extensive transmission electron microscopy (TEM) studies showed more than one nucleation site for martensite transformation and the transformation mechanisms were observed to be γ (fcc) →  (hcp), γ (fcc) → ′ (bcc) and γ (fcc) →  (hcp) → ′ (bcc).     

Cyclic fracture behaviour of 304LN stainless steel under load and displacement control modes

Attempts have been made to understand cyclic fracture behaviour of AISI 304LN stainless steel used for nuclear piping materials under load vis‐à‐vis displacement controlled fracture tests; the former closely simulate the seismic loading conditions. The load controlled tests indicate that a material fails in a limited number of cycles even when the load amplitudes are sufficiently below the maximum load in a monotonic J–R test. The displacement controlled tests, on the other hand, show that the energy absorbing ability of a material gets severely reduced under cyclic loading conditions. The obtained results on standard laboratory specimens have been compared with similar available results on components in order to provide guidelines for maximum load bearing capability of engineering components under cyclic loading.     

Plastically elastically dominant fatigue interaction in 316L stainless steel and 6061‐T6 aluminium alloy

Abstract Extensive studies involving multilevel loading have been performed to study the interaction effects of High–Low and Low–High loading sequences on various metals. ^{1 - 10} High–Low sequences generally yield ‘damage’ sums less than unity while ‘damage’ sums for Low–High sequences are typically > 1. It can be appreciated that the mechanisms governing fatigue behaviour under elastically dominant conditions differ from those observed under predominantly plastic conditions. This paper presents results on the interaction between plastically dominant fatigue (PDF) and elastically dominant fatigue (EDF) in 316L stainless steel and 6061‐T6 aluminium alloy. In addition, overstraining effects coupled with PDF and EDF interaction in 316L stainless steel are also reported.     

Torsional fatigue with axial constant stress of oligo‐crystalline 316L stainless steel thin wire

A series of symmetric torsional fatigue with axial constant stress tests, a kind of multiaxial fatigue test, was conducted on oligo‐crystalline 316L stainless steel thin wire, which was less than 3.5 grains across diameter of 200 μm. The material presents significant cyclic hardening under symmetric torsion cycling, and hardening is more obvious with the increasing shear strain amplitude. However, symmetric torsional cycle with constant axial stresses tests characterize rapid initial hardening and then gradually softening until fatigue failure. The axial stress has a great effect on torsional fatigue life. Fractography observation shows a mixed failure mode combined torsional fatigue with tensile strain because of axial tensile stress. A newly proposed model with axial stress damage parameter is used to predict the torsional fatigue life with constant axial stress of small scale thin wire.     

Evaluation of fatigue life for titanium alloy TC4 under variable amplitude multiaxial loading

Fatigue tests under variable amplitude multiaxial loading were conducted on titanium alloy TC4 tubular specimens. A method to estimate the fatigue life under variable amplitude multiaxial loading has been proposed. Multiaxial fatigue parameter based on Wu–Hu–Song approach and rainflow cycle counting and Miner–Palmgren rule were applied in this method. The capability of fatigue life prediction for the proposed method was checked against the test data of TC4 alloy under variable amplitude multiaxial loading. The prediction results are all within a factor of two scatter band of the test results.     

Influence of temperature on multiaxial creep behaviour of 304HCu austenitic stainless steel

Effect of temperature on multiaxial creep behaviour of 304HCu austenitic stainless steel has been investigated. The multiaxiality was introduced by incorporating notches in smooth specimens. Creep rupture life increased with notch acuity ratio having a saturation/decline tendency. Notch strengthening increased with temperature, stress and notch sharpness. Multiaxial ductility decreased rapidly with notch sharpness and tended towards saturation. Fracture mode was found to change from transgranular ductile to intergranular creep depending on the stress, temperature and notch sharpness. Finite element analysis of notched specimens along with orientation imaging microscopic study was carried out to assess the deformation and damage at different normalised stress ratio. A temperature independent unique master plot for multiaxial rupture life as a function of stress has been established.     

Stochastic modelling of low-cycle fatigue damage in 316L stainless steel under variable multiaxial loading

In the present study, a stochastic model is developed for the low-cycle fatigue life prediction and reliability assessment of 316L stainless steel under variable multiaxial loading. In the proposed model, fatigue phenomenon is considered as a Markov process, and damage vector and reliability are defined on every plane. Any low-cycle fatigue damage evaluating method can be included in the proposed model. The model enables calculation of statistical reliability and crack initiation direction under variable multiaxial loading, which are generally not available. In the present study, a critical plane method proposed by Kandil et al . ( Metals Soc., London 280, 203–210, 1982) maximum tensile strain range, and von Mises equivalent strain range are used to calculate fatigue damage. When the critical plane method is chosen, the effect of multiple critical planes is also included in the proposed model. Maximum tensile strain and von Mises strain methods are used for the demonstration of the generality of the proposed model. The material properties and the stochastic model parameters are obtained from uniaxial tests only. The stochastic model made of the parameters obtained from the uniaxial tests is applied to the life prediction and reliability assessment of 316L stainless steel under variable multiaxial loading. The predicted results show good aggreement with experimental results.     

Development of new cyclic plasticity model for 304LN stainless steel through simulation and experimental investigation

Cyclic plastic deformation characteristics of 304LN stainless steel material have been studied with two proposed cyclic plasticity models. Model MM-I has been proposed to improve the simulation of ratcheting phenomenon and model MM-II has the capability to simulate both cyclic hardening and softening characteristics of the material at various strain ranges. In the present paper, strain controlled simulations are performed with constant, increasing and decreasing strain amplitudes to verify the influences of loading schemes on cyclic plasticity behaviors through simulations and experiments. It is observed that the material 304LN exhibits non Masing characteristics under cyclic plastic deformation. The measured deviation from Masing is well established from the simulation as well as from experiment. Simulation result shows that the assumption of only isotropic hardening is unable to explain the hardening or softening characteristics of the material in low cycle fatigue test. The introduction of memory stress based cyclic hardening coefficient and an exponentially varying ratcheting parameter in the recall term of kinematic hardening rule, have resulted in exceptional improvement in the ratcheting simulation with the proposed model, MM-II. Plastic energy, shape and size of the hysteresis loops are additionally used to verify the nature of cyclic plasticity deformations. Ratcheting test and simulation have been performed to estimate the accumulated plastic strain with different mean and amplitude stresses. In the proposed model MM-I, a new proposition is incorporated for yield stress variation based on the memory stress of loading history along with the evolution of ratcheting parameter with an exponential function of plastic strain. These formulations lead to better realization of ratcheting rate in the transient cycles for all loading schemes. Effect of mean stress on the plastic energy is examined by the simulation model, MM-I. Finally, the micro structural investigation from transmission electronic microscopy is used to correlate the macroscopic and microscopic non Masing behavior of the material.     

Cyclic strain rate effect on martensitic transformation and fatigue behaviour of an austenitic stainless steel

In this study, the effect of strain rate on the cyclic behaviour of 304L stainless steel is investigated to unveil the complex interrelationship between martensitic phase transformation, secondary hardening, cyclic deformation and fatigue behaviour of this alloy. A series of uniaxial strain controlled fatigue tests with varying cyclic strain rates were conducted at zero and non‐zero mean strain conditions. Secondary hardening was found to be closely related to the volume fraction of strain‐induced martensite which was affected by adiabatic heating due to increasing cyclic strain rates. Tests with lower secondary hardening rates maintained lower stress amplitudes during cyclic loading which resulted in longer fatigue lives for similar strain amplitudes. Fatigue resistance of 304L stainless steel was found to be more sensitive to changes in strain rate than the presence of mean strain. The mean strain effect was minimal due to the significant mean stress relaxation in this material.     

Morphologies and characteristics of deformation induced martensite during low cycle fatigue behaviour of austenitic stainless steel

Quantification, formation and nucleation micro-mechanisms of deformation induced martensite during low cycle fatigue behaviour of austenitic stainless steel have been investigated at various strain amplitudes tested at ambient temperature. The evolutionary deformation induced martensite has been quantified through magnetic measurement technique. It has been found that as strain amplitude increases, the volume fraction of deformation induced martensite increases. Extensive analytical transmission electron microscopy studies showed more than one nucleation site for martensitic transformation and the transformation micro-mechanisms have been observed to be: γ (fcc) → ? (hcp), γ (fcc) → α′ (bcc), γ (fcc) → deformation twins → α′ (bcc) and γ (fcc) → ? (hcp) → α′ (bcc).     

An analytical relation between the Weibull and Basquin laws for smooth and notched specimens and application to constant amplitude fatigue

Starting from the classical definition of stress‐life Wöhler curve in the form of the Basquin law, an analytical procedure for the calibration of the four parameters' Wöhler curve (the Weibull law) for a plain specimen is proposed. The obtained parameters are then adjusted by means of an additional slope factor preserving the inflection point of the curve while changing its slope in order to model the experimental observations in which an increase of the scatter in life prediction is observed when reducing the stress amplitude. The same approach has then been adopted to calibrate the Weibull law parameters for a notched specimen, and the fitting slope factor has been found to be a value that changes with the material but remains constant with the stress concentration factor. The findings have been validated with existing experimental data on 2024‐T3 aluminum alloy and normalized SAE 4130 steel.     

Multiaxial notch fatigue life prediction based on pseudo stress correction and finite element analysis under variable amplitude loading

A new computational methodology is proposed for fatigue life prediction of notched components subjected to variable amplitude multiaxial loading. In the proposed methodology, an estimation method of non‐proportionality factor (F) proposed by authors in the case of constant amplitude multiaxial loading is extended and applied to variable amplitude multiaxial loading by using Wang‐Brown's reversal counting approach. The pseudo stress correction method integrated with linear elastic finite element analysis is utilized to calculate the local elastic‐plastic stress and strain responses at the notch root. For whole local strain history, the plane with weight‐averaged maximum shear strain range is defined as the critical plane in this study. Based on the defined critical plane, a multiaxial fatigue damage model combined with Miner's linear cumulative damage law is used to predict fatigue life. The experimentally obtained fatigue data for 7050‐T7451 aluminium alloy notched shaft specimens under constant and variable amplitude multiaxial loadings are used to verify the proposed methodology and equivalent strain‐based methodology. The results show that the proposed methodology is superior to equivalent strain‐based methodology.     

The effect of pit size and density on the fatigue behaviour of a pre‐corroded martensitic stainless steel

UNS S17400 steel is used in turbines for the aerospace and utility industries. While it is generally corrosion resistant, it is susceptible to pitting when exposed to aqueous chloride environments. Effects of pitting characteristics, such as depth, width, and local density on fatigue life, have been studied in this work to better inform criteria for component replacement or repair. While pit depth correlates well with cracking, the deepest pit never initiated the crack that ultimately led to failure. The clustering of pits, or local pitting density, also correlated well with crack initiation location; however, the densest region of pitting was not always the location where cracking occurred. There is likely no single metric that directly correlates pitting with fatigue cracking, rather there is a combination of pitting characteristics that ultimately lead to cracking. The results from this work suggest that pit depth and local pitting density are among the more important metrics.     

On the mixed Mode II/III fatigue threshold behaviour for aluminium alloys 2014‐T6 and 7075‐T6

This paper describes an investigation into the fatigue threshold behaviour of two structural aluminium aerospace alloys, Al 2014‐T6 and Al 7075‐T6, when subjected to Mode II, Mode III and mixed Mode II/III loading. A unique four‐point shear loading test rig was employed to cyclically load sharply edge‐notched square bar specimens using an increasing load technique. The main aim of the work has been to generate Mode II–Mode III interaction diagrams for the fatigue threshold in each case, in order to facilitate improved design procedures for components fabricated from these alloys, which are susceptible to fatigue cracking under predominantly shear type loading. Aircraft are subjected to structural loads consisting of: pressurization, tension/compression, bending, shear and torsion, both on the ground and in flight. Representative fatigue fracture surfaces have been examined using scanning electron microscopy.