Low cycle fatigue, fatigue crack propagation and substructures in a series of polycrystalline Cu-Al alloys

Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) on smooth hour glass specimens and Fatigue Crack Propagation (FCP) studies on Single Edge Notch (SEN) specimens were carried out at room temperature on four Cu-Al polycrystalline alloys to investigate the effects of Stacking Fault Energy (SFE) and mechanical property variations on fatigue characteristics. Significant improvements in fatigue properties were observed for alloys of low SFE. A microhardness technique was used to delineate the fatigue plastic zone ahead of stopped cracks at several stress intensity ranges for all the alloys. Planar slip was associated with a less than a second power dependence of plastic zone size on the stress intensity range. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) was used to observe the substructures that developed both in LCF at different strain ranges and also ahead of fatigue cracks at different stress intensity ranges. Fractography was carried out to study the micromechanisms of crack propagation using a two stage replication technique. The experimental results were in good agreement with a theoretical model for FCP developed previously by the authors which incorporates mechanical and microstructural variables. AXENA, formerly Graduate Student, Dept. of Materials Science and Metallurgical Engineering, University of Cincinnati is This paper is based on a thesis submitted by Ashok Saxena in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Cincinnati.