Fatigue limit evaluation of various martensitic stainless steels with new robust thermographic data analysis

Thermography represents an important tool to study fatigue behaviour of materials.In this work, the fatigue limit of martensitic and precipitation hardening stainless steels has been determined with thermographic methods. Despite their use in corrosive and cryogenic environments, there is a data lack in literature concerning the study of fatigue behaviour.The peculiarity of these materials is the brittle behaviour: therefore, during fatigue tests the characteristic small deformations determine small changes of temperature. Thus, to properly determine the fatigue limit of aforementioned stainless steels, a more accurate setup is necessary in order to correctly detect surface temperature of specimens due to dissipation heat sources.In literature, different procedures have already been proposed to evaluate the fatigue limit from thermal data but very few works lead to an early detection of dissipation process which can obtain a further reduction of overall testing time. The aim of the paper is to propose a new robust thermal data analysis procedure for estimating fatigue limit of stainless steels in automatable way.     

Design criterion for fatigue strengthening of riveted beams in a 120-year-old railway metallic bridge using pre-stressed CFRP plates

This study presents a design criterion developed for fatigue strengthening of a 120-year-old metallic railway bridge in Switzerland and presents a pre-stressed un-bonded reinforcement (PUR) system developed to apply the strengthening. The PUR system uses carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates; however, unlike conventional pre-stressed CFRP reinforcement methods, preparation of the existing metallic bridge surface is not required. This decreases the time required for on-site strengthening procedures. The principle of the constant life diagram (CLD) and two fatigue failure criteria (Johnson and Goodman) are described. Analytical formulations are developed based on the CLD method to determine the minimum CFRP pre-stress level required to prevent fatigue crack initiation. The PUR system uses an applied pre-stress force to reduce the mean stress level (and stress ratio) to shift an existing fatigue-susceptible metallic detail from the ‘at risk’ finite life regime to the ‘safe’ infinite life regime. The applied CLD method is particularly valuable when the stress history of the detail is not known and it is difficult to assess the remaining fatigue life. Moreover, it is shown that the currently adopted approach in many structural codes which emphasizes stress range as the dominant parameter influencing fatigue life are non-conservative for tension–tension stress patterns (i.e., stress ratios of 0 < R < 1). Analyses show that the modified Johnson formula accurately reflects the combined effect of stress range, mean stress level, and material properties, and offers a relatively easy design procedure. Details of a retrofit field application on members of a riveted wrought iron railway bridge are given. A wireless sensor network (WSN) system is used for long-term monitoring of the on-site CFRP stress levels and temperature of the retrofitted details. WSN measurements indicate that increases in ambient temperature result in increased CFRP pre-stress levels.     

Modelling dislocation assisted tempering during rolling contact fatigue in bearing steels

Rolling contact fatigue in bearing steels is manifested by dark-etching regions, which are attributed to deformation induced tempering. In order to quantitatively explain this phenomenon, a model is suggested for martensite tempering assisted by dislocation glide during rolling contact fatigue. In the model, dislocations transport carbon from the matrix to carbide particles, provided that the carbon is located at a certain distance range from the dislocation contributing to the tempering process. By calculating the amount of carbon in the matrix, the kinetics of carbide thickening and hardness reduction are computed. It is found that the dark-etching region kinetics can be controlled by both bearing operation conditions (temperature and deformation rate) and microstructure (type, size, and volume fraction of carbides). The model is validated against tested bearings, and its limitations are discussed.     

Fatigue life improvement of 12Cr1МoV steel by irradiation with Zr+ ion beam

Cyclic tension and bend tests were performed on heat-resistant 12Cr1MoV steel specimens in as-supplied condition as well as after Zr⁺ ion beam surface irradiation. Distinct differences in strain induced relief, as well in cracking pattern of modified surface layer were observed by optical microscopy and interference profilometry. Changes in subsurface layer are characterized by means of nano- and microindentation and fractography of fracture surfaces (with the help of scanning electron microscopy). It is shown that the main influence on mechanical properties is mostly induced by thermal treatment during irradiation rather than formation of a 2 μm thick layer doped with Zr. The differences in deformation behavior may be explained by physical mesomechanics concepts.     

Fatigue in bamboo

This paper describes the results of an experimental programme to determine the fatigue behaviour of bamboo. Bamboo is subjected to cyclic loading, both in the plant itself and subsequently when the material is used in load-bearing applications in the construction industry. However, there is currently no data in the literature describing fatigue in this material. We found that sections of bamboo culm loaded parallel to the culm axis did not undergo fatigue failure: samples either failed on the first loading cycle, or not at all. By contrast, fatigue was readily apparent in samples loaded in compression across the diameter of the culm. The number of cycles to failure increased as the cyclic load range decreased in a manner similar to that found in many engineering materials: fatigue occurred at applied loads as small as 40% of the ultimate strength. Two different species of bamboo were tested and found to have different ultimate strengths but similar high-cycle fatigue strengths. Finite element analysis was used to help understand the progression of fatigue damage and the effect of stress concentration features. Some tentative design rules are proposed to define stress levels for the safe use of bamboo, taking fatigue into account.     

The effect of baking time,fillet radius,and hardness on the lifecycles of pole fastening screws in an electric motor with hydrogen embrittlement

In order to protect bolts from corrosion, electroplating such as zinc plating is widely used. However, hydrogen can easily penetrate or diffuse into the vacancies and dislocations between the lattices of bolt steel during electroplating. As the diffused hydrogen defects inside the lattice are in gaseous form, small cracks can easily be produced due to high pressure from the hydrogen gas. In this research, in order to determine the root cause of the fracture in pole fastening screws resulting from hydrogen embrittlement in typical electric motors, additional factors that accelerate hydrogen embrittlement fracture were selectively applied, including a small fillet in the head–shank transition and excessive hardness, and parametric study was performed experimentally.     

Effect of microstructure on the fatigue crack growth behaviour of a near-α Ti alloy

Fatigue crack growth behaviour of Ti–6Al–2Zr–1.5Mo–1.5V (VT-20 a near-α Ti alloy) was studied in lamellar, bimodal and acicular microstructural conditions. Fatigue crack growth tests at both increasing and decreasing stress intensity factor range values were performed at ambient temperature and a loading ratio of 0.3 using compact tension samples. Lamellar and acicular microstructures showed lower fatigue crack growth rates as compared to the bimodal microstructure due to the tortuous nature of cracks in the former and the cleavage of primary α in the latter. The threshold stress intensity factor range was highest for acicular microstructure.     

“Size effect” in the fatigue behavior of Friction Stir Welded plates

Comparative fatigue tests were carried out on Friction Stir Welded specimens of a 2195-T8 aluminum–lithium alloy that differed significantly in width. The width of the larger specimens was over thirteen times greater than that of the small specimens. Fatigue results showed a clear “size effect”, i.e. fatigue life of large specimens was about 40% of the corresponding value of small specimens. The Equivalent Initial Flaw Size methodology was adopted to correlate the two sets of results. Fatigue crack initiation life was disregarded with respect to crack propagation life, and fatigue life was evaluated only as propagation of a small pre-existing defect. Following this methodology, test results of small specimens were used to evaluate the initial equivalent flaw contained in each specimen. It was assumed that this data followed a normal distribution. The equivalent initial flaw in larger specimens was evaluated by simple geometrical considerations. A very good assessment of mean fatigue life and scatter in the fatigue results of large specimens was obtained by simulating the propagation of these defects. Calculations were carried out by taking also welding residual stresses into account, but the results demonstrated that this effect was not significant.     

Fatigue performance of Friction Stir Welded titanium structural joints

The Friction Stir Welding process for producing corner and T-joints out of 6 mm Ti–6Al–4V was developed in this effort using previous work on butt weld joints as a starting point. A limited number of corner joints were also subjected to a bending fatigue test to preliminarily assess the applicability of the process in producing fatigue critical structures. These results were also compared to predictions made by applying stress concentration factors to previously generated uniaxial butt joint test data. While additional testing is still required to obtain a higher degree of confidence in the conclusions of this study, it was found that the performance of these corner joints in fatigue could be compared to butt joint data when a geometrically based stress concentration factor is applied. Furthermore, these welded joints possessed equivalent fatigue performance relative to identical test specimens machined from wrought product forms, both bar and extrusion. Thus, from the perspective of fatigue design, this study has shown that Friction Stir Welding is able to produce structures with the same performance as currently made from wrought materials.     

Fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks with the coupled extended finite element/fast marching method

A numerical technique for modeling fatigue crack propagation of multiple coplanar cracks is presented. The proposed method couples the extended finite element method (X-FEM) [Int. J. Numer. Meth. Engng. 48 (11) (2000) 1549] to the fast marching method (FMM) [Level Set Methods & Fast Marching Methods: Evolving Interfaces in Computational Geometry, Fluid Mechanics, Computer Vision, and Materials Science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1999]. The entire crack geometry, including one or more cracks, is represented by a single signed distance (level set) function. Merging of distinct cracks is handled naturally by the FMM with no collision detection or mesh reconstruction required. The FMM in conjunction with the Paris crack growth law is used to advance the crack front. In the X-FEM, a discontinuous function and the two-dimensional asymptotic crack-tip displacement fields are added to the finite element approximation to account for the crack using the notion of partition of unity [Comput. Meth. Appl. Mech. Engng. 139 (1996) 289]. This enables the domain to be modeled by a single fixed finite element mesh with no explicit meshing of the crack surfaces. In an earlier study [Engng. Fract. Mech. 70 (1) (2003) 29], the methodology, algorithm, and implementation for three-dimensional crack propagation of single cracks was introduced. In this paper, simulations for multiple planar cracks are presented, with crack merging and fatigue growth carried out without any user-intervention or remeshing.