Influence of the Martensitic Transformation on the Fatigue Life of Austenitic Stainless Steels

The martensitic transformation in austenitic stainless steels can be induced by plastic deformation at room temperature. The benefit of this transformation is commonly used to strengthen stainless steels grades, i.e. their yield and tensile resistance can be adjusted according to the requirement by cold rolling. In this paper, the martensitic transformation was induced by means of torsion deformation. Several torsion angles were selected to achieve different percentages of martensite at the surface of the specimens and then the effect on the fatigue life of the steel was studied. Fatigue testing results showed dissimilar behavior depending on the stress ratio (R) applied during the test. As a conclusion, the presence of martensite in the surface increases the fatigue life for high stress ratios (R=0.8), while at low R values martensitic transformation has no positive effect.