The effect of quenching and defects size on the HCF behaviour of Boron steel
Abstract This work investigates the effect of natural and artificial surface defects and quenching on the fatigue strength of a Boron steel (22MnB5). A vast experimental campaign has been undertaken to study the high cycle fatigue behaviour and more specifically the fatigue damage mechanisms observed in quenched and untreated materials, under different loading conditions and with differents artificial defects sizes (from 25 μm to 370 μm radius). In order to test the sheet metal in shear an original test apparatus is used. The critical defect size is determined to be 100 ± 50 μm. This critical size does not appear to depend on the loading type or the microstructure of the material (i.e. ferritic–perlitic or martensitic). However, for large defects, the quenched material is more sensitive to the defect size than the untreated material. For a defect size range of 100–300 μm the slope of the Kitagawa–Takahashi diagram is approximately −1/3 and −1/6 for the quenched and untreated materials respectively. A probabilistic approach that leads naturally to a probabilistic Kitagawa type diagram is developed. This methodology can be used to explain the relationship between the influence of the heat treatment and the defect size on the fatigue behaviour of this steel.
Influence of Al-Si coating on microstructure and mechanical properties of fiber laser welded 22MnB5 steel
Abstract Fiber laser welding of as-received 22MnB5 steel with Al-10wt.%Si coating in butt configuration was performed. The influence of Al-Si coating on microstructure transformation and mechanical properties including tensile tests, fatigue tests and Erichsen cupping tests was investigated. Ferrite with Al enrichment (1.37 wt%) was found in the fusion zone (FZ) of coated welded joints with 15% area proportion, while nearly entire martensite structure composed the FZ in the case of de-coated joint. The strain localization was more likely to accumulate at the martensite/martensite interface rather than the ferrite/martensite interface due to the higher kernel average misorientation (KAM) values. Microhardness of the FZ in coated welded joints dropped by 50HV compared with that of de-coated welded joints. However, tensile properties were not affected since failure occurred at base metal (BM). Fatigue samples of coated welded joints showed better performance than the de-coated ones, suggesting that the ferrite in the FZ had positive effect on fatigue lives under cycling load conditions. The Erichsen cupping tests showed similar Erichsen values (5.60 mm and 5.67 mm) for de-coated and coated welded joints. An opposite effect of ferrite on Erichsen cupping tests was obtained. The peak force required for deformation dropped by 35% with Al-10wt.%Si coating.
A cumulative damage model for fatigue life estimation of high-strength steels in high-cycle and very-high-cycle fatigue regimes
A cumulative fatigue damage model is presented to estimate fatigue life for high-strength steels in high-cycle and very-high-cycle fatigue regimes with fish-eye mode failure, and a simple formula is obtained. The model takes into account the inclusion size, fine granular area (FGA) size, and tensile strength of materials. Then, the equivalent crack growth rate of FGA is proposed. The model is used to estimate the fatigue life and equivalent crack growth rate for a bearing steel (GCr15) of present investigation and four high-strength steels in the literature. The equivalent crack growth rate of FGA is calculated to be of the order of magnitude of 10-1410-11 m/cycle. The estimated results accord well with the present experimental results and prior predictions and experimental results in the literature. Moreover, the effect of inclusion size on fatigue life is discussed. It is indicated that the inclusion size has an important influence on the fatigue life, and the effect is related to the relative size of inclusion for FGA. For the inclusion size close to the FGA size, the former has a substantial effect on the fatigue life. While for the relatively large value of FGA size to inclusion size, it has little effect on the fatigue life.