| Abstract: | Low-Cycle Fatigue of Ductile Steels under Multiaxial Deformations To investigate the fatigue behaviour of cyclically softening and hardening steels under multiaxial elastic-plastic strains, axial strain and shear strain controlled fatigue tests under constant amplitude loading were carried out. S-N curves under axial strain and torsional pure shear as well as under combined axial strain and shear, in and out of phase, were obtained for the cyclically softening tempered steel 30 CrNiMo 8 (similar to AlSI-Type 4340) and the cyclically hardening quenched stainless steel X 10 CrNiTi 189 (AISI-Type 321) in the region of low-cycle fatigue. For both steels, used in the design of vessels, pipings, shafts, etc. the fatigue life to crack initiation is reduced by an out of phase (δ = 90°) shearing of the strained specimens in comparison to the in phase loading. The decrease of fatigue life under out of phase strains is caused by changing direction of principal strains resulting in an interaction of the deformations in all directions of the surface. This interaction is taken into account by a calculation procedure deriving an equivalent strain and predicting the fatigue life under combined strain on the base of S-N curves for unaxial strain. |
