Fundamental Research on Fatigue Properties of Closed-Packed Hexagonal Lattice Metal under Biaxial Stress

Assisted living instruments and medical implants, such as wheelchairs and joint prostheses are usually subjected to biaxial or three-axial stresses instead of uniaxial stress. So, authors already developed a servo biaxial fatigue-testing machine, and clarified about the performance evaluation. Moreover, closed-packed hexagonal lattice metal, such as magnesium and titanium, is frequently used for assisted living instruments or medical implants. In this research, fatigue crack propagation tests of magnesium alloy AZ31B and pure titanium TP340C were conducted under conditions of biaxial and uniaxial loading by using a cruciform specimen in a bi-axial fatigue machine, in order to investigate the effect of non-singular stress cycling on the fatigue crack growth properties ⊿K-da/dN. From these comprehensive experiments, in the magnesium alloy, the re-markable effect was found in the specific biaxial load stress ratio on ⊿K-da/dN relation. When biaxial load stress ratio was 0.5, it turned out that the fatigue crack propagation rate of a magnesium alloy becomes very slow. On the other hand, in the titanium, it was confirmed that there is a little influence of a biaxial load stress ratio on ⊿KⅠ -da/dN relation.