Failure Mechanism of Very High Cycle Fatigue for High Strength Steels

Abstract:

In recent years, the core engineering components of high-speed train, automobiles and aircrafts are required to endure fatigue loads up from 10⁸ to 10¹⁰ cycles. The present study results show that in the very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regimes of more than 10⁷ cycles, the fatigue failure of high strength steel materials can occur below the traditional fatigue limit, hence the VHCF investigations of high strength steels not only help to further understand the fatigue essence and mechanism, but also do research on the fatigue design and life assessment method. This paper summarizes works of VHCF researches for high strength steels in recent years, such as the characteristics of S-N curve, the observations on fish-eye, which is one of the typical characteristics of fracture surface, crack initiation, crack propagation, etc. The present work also analyzes the fatigue mechanisms and briefly discusses several factors that affect VHCF properties, such as hydrogen effect, inclusion effect, frequency effect. Some possible and prospective aspects of future researches are also proposed.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 664)
• Pages: 275-281
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.664.275
• Online since: September 2015
• Authors: Kang Wei, Bo Lin He*
• Keywords: Crack Initiations, Fatigue Limit, Fatigue Mechanism, S-N Curve, Very High Cycle Fatigue

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