Chengqi Sun

Very high cycle fatigue for GCr15 steel with smooth and hole-defect specimens

Very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) properties of a low temperature tempering bearing steel GCr15 with smooth and hole-defect specimens are studied by employing a rotary bending test machine with frequency of 52.5 Hz. Both smooth and hole-defect specimens break in VHCF regime with some difference in fatigue crack initiation. For smooth specimens, a fine granular area (FGA) is observed near the grain boundary in the fracture surface of the specimens broken after 10^7 cycles. But no FGA is observed in the hole-defect specimens broken in VHCF regime, and the VHCF crack does not initiate from the small hole at the surface as it does at low or high cycle fatigue regime. Internal stress is employed to explain the VHCF behavior of these two types of specimens. At last, an advanced dislocation model based on Tanaka and Mura model is proposed to illustrate the internal stress process and to predict fatigue crack initiation life with FGA observed in the fracture region.

Correlation of crack growth rate and stress ratio for fatigue damage containing very high cycle fatigue regime

A model is proposed to correlate the crack growth rate and stress ratio containing very high cycle fatigue regime. The model is verified by the experimental data in literature. Then a formula is derived for the effect of mean stress on fatigue strength, and it is used to estimate the fatigue strength of a bearing steel in very high cycle fatigue regime at different stress ratios. The estimated results are also compared with those by Goodman formula.

Nanocrystalline Formation During Mechanical Attrition of Cobalt

The nanocrystalline (nc) formation was studied in cobalt (a mixture of ε (hexagonal close packed) and γ (face-centered cubic) phases) subjected to surface mechanical attrition treatment. Electron microscopy revealed the operation of { 10 10 }〈 1120 〉 prismatic and {0001}〈 1120 〉 basal slip in the ε phase, leading to the successive subdivision of grains to nanoscale. In particular, the dislocation splitting into the stacking faults was observed to occur in ultrafine and nc grains. By contrast, the planar dislocation arrays, twins and martensites were evidenced in the γ phase. The strain-induced γ→ε martensitic transformation was found to progress continuously in ultrafine and nc grains as the strain increased. The nc formation in the γ phase was interpreted in terms of the martensitic transformation and twinning.

Effects of Loading Frequency and Loading Type on High-Cycle and Very-High-Cycle Fatigue of a High-Strength Steel

High-cycle and very-high-cycle fatigue tests via rotary bending (52.5 Hz), electromagnetic resonance (120 Hz) axial cycling, and ultrasonic (20 kHz) axial cycling were performed for a high-strength steel with three heat treatment conditions, and the effects of loading frequency and loading type on fatigue strength and fatigue life were investigated. The results revealed that the loading frequency effect is caused by the combined response of strain rate increase and induced temperature rise. A parameter η was proposed to judge the occurrence of loading frequency effect, and the calculated results were in agreement with the experimental data. In addition, a statistical method based on the control volume was used to reconcile the effect of loading type, and the predicted data were consistent with the experimental results.

Crack initiation characteristics and fatigue property of a high-strength steel in VHCF regime under different stress ratios

Crack initiation characteristics and fatigue property of a high-strength steel in very-high-cycle fatigue (VHCF) regime under different stress ratios were investigated in this paper. Fatigue tests were performed at stress ratios of -1, -0.5, 0.1 and 0.3 by using an ultrasonic fatigue testing machine. The difference of S-N data and the characteristics of crack initiation under different stress ratios were examined. It is shown that the magnitude of stress ratio has a substantial effect on the fatigue strength that decreases with the increase of stress ratio. However, the variation tendency of the S-N data from low-cycle fatigue to VHCF regime is similar for the four cases. SEM observations of the fracture surface indicate that fatigue crack initiates from the surface of specimen in low-cycle regime and initiates mostly from the inclusion in the interior of specimen in high-cycle and VHCF regimes, which is irrespective of the state of stress ratio. By means of Focused Ion Beam technique, the samples of crack initiation region were prepared then observed via TEM. The observations show the microscopic morphology of the crack initiation region, showing the different crack initiation characteristics and revealing the mechanism of crack initiation for different stress ratios. Moreover, the effect of inclusion size on fatigue life is discussed with the results showing that the effect of stress ratio and inclusion size on fatigue strength is well described by our proposed formula.

Dynamic buckling behavior of multi-walled carbon nanotubes subjected to step axial loading

This paper studies the dynamic buckling behavior of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) subjected to step axial loading. A buckling condition is derived, and numerical results are presented for MWNTs under fixed boundary conditions. It is shown that the critical buckling load of MWNTs is of multi-branches and decreases as the time elongates. The associated buckling modes for different layers of MWNTs can be either in-phase or out of phase, which is related to the branch that the critical buckling load belongs to. For MWNTs with the same innermost tube radius, the critical buckling load is decreased when increasing the layers.