The effect on fatigue life of residual stress and surface hardness resulting from different cutting conditions of 0.45%C steel

The affected layer is generated within the machined surface layer through the cutting process. Cutting conditions such as the nose radius of the tool, feed rate and shape of cutting edge at the finishing operation affect the residual stress, surface hardness, and surface roughness. In this paper, it is shown that such machined surface property could be controlled by the setting of the cutting conditions to some extent. Then the effect of the machining conditions on the fatigue life was investigated through a fatigue test using the specimen finished under various cutting conditions. It was shown that it is possible to get longer fatigue life for machined parts than the virgin material or the carefully finished material without affected layer, only by setting the proper cutting conditions. Such a situation was realized when the generated residual stress was small and the induced surface hardness was high. A longer fatigue life for the machined components can be obtained by applying such cutting conditions as a low feed rate, a small corner radius and a chamfered cutting edge tool.