Saburo Okazaki

A New Fatigue Testing Machine for Investigating the Behavior of Small Shear-Mode Fatigue Cracks

The investigation of the behavior of small shear-mode fatigue cracks in the high-cycle fatigue regime is essential to understand the mechanism of rolling-contact fatigue failures, such as flaking in bearings and shelling in rails, from the fracture mechanics point of view. The stable growth of a shear-mode fatigue crack was achieved by applying static compression to a specimen in a cyclic torsion fatigue test. This loading condition is usually obtained by a combined tension-torsion testing machine with a servo-hydraulic control system. In this study, a new testing machine was developed and found to be superior to the servo-hydraulic testing machine in terms of price, operation/maintenance costs, operating speed, and installation volume. For substantiation and demonstration purposes, a shear-mode fatigue crack growth test with a bearing steel was also carried out using both the new and the conventional servo-hydraulic testing machines. The experiments revealed that under the same loading conditions, nonpropagating shear-mode cracks of similar size and geometry could be obtained by the respective testing machines. Thus, it was concluded that the new testing machine has equivalent capabilities to the servo-hydraulic testing machine in performing shear-mode fatigue crack growth tests.

Notch Effects in High Cycle Fatigue of Ti-6Al-4V

In this study, a series of experimental studies was conducted to investigate the fatigue behavior of Ti-6Al-4V alloy at room temperature. Specifically, by inspecting the cylindrical specimens with a circumferential notch of different depths (20-200µm) and notch root radii (20-100µm), the notch effect was systematically investigated with tension-compression fatigue tests (R = –1). To quantify the effects of small notch, the -parameter model was adopted and its applicability for Ti-6Al-4V alloy was examined. Finally, the fatigue characteristics are discussed in conjunction with the behavior of small fatigue cracks at notches.

DESIGNING OF A TESTING MACHINE FOR SHEAR-MODE FATIGUE CRACK GROWTH

As recognized, flaking-type failure is one of the serious problems for railroad tracks and bearings. In essence, flaking-type failure is closely related to the growth of the shear-mode (Mode-II and Mode-III) fatigue crack. In our research group, it is demonstrated that a shear-mode fatigue crack can be reproduced for cylindrical specimens by applying the cyclic torsion in the presence of the static axial compressive stress. However, a biaxial servo-hydraulic fatigue testing machine is quite expensive to purchase and costly to maintain. The low testing speed (about 10Hz) of the testing machine further aggravates the situation. As a result, study on shear-mode fatigue crack growth is still in the nascent stage. To overcome the difficulties mentioned above, in this research activity, we developed a high-performance and cost-effective testing machine to reproduce the shear-mode fatigue crack growth by improving the available resonance-type torsion fatigue testing machine. The primary advantage of using the resonance-type torsion fatigue testing machine is cost-efficiency. In addition, the testing speed effectively can be improved, in comparison with that of a biaxial servo-hydraulic fatigue testing machine. By utilizing the newly-designed testing machine, we have demonstrated that we can successfully reproduce the shear-mode fatigue crack.

Synchrotron 3D characterization of arrested fatigue cracks initiated from small tilted notches in steel

High resolution synchrotron X-ray tomography has been used to obtain 3D images of arrested cracks initiated at small artificial defects located on the surface of cylindrical steel specimens subjected to mode I fatigue loading. These defects consist in small semi-circular slits tilted at 0¢X, 30¢X or 60¢X with respect to the plane normal to the loading axis; all of them had the same defect size, area = 188 £gm, where the area denotes the area of the domain defined by projecting the defect on a plane normal to the loading axis. Arrested cracks initiated from the notch were observed for all tilt angles at the surface of samples cycled at the fatigue limit (stress amplitude at which the specimen does not fail after 1iN107 cycles). High resolution synchrotron X-ray tomography has been used to obtain 3D images of those small defects and non-propagating cracks (NPC). Despite the fact that steel is a highly attenuating material for X rays, high resolution 3D images of the cracks and of the initiating defects were obtained (0.65 ƒÝm voxel size). The values of surface crack length measured by tomography are the same as those obtained by optical microscope measurements. The area values present the same tendency as the surface length of NPC, i.e. larger non-propagating cracks areas were observed in the softer steel. In the extreme case of 60o tilted defect, the crack fronts appear much more discontinuous with several cracks propagating in mode I until arrest.

Investigation for small shear-mode fatigue cracks in bearing steels

Flaking and spalling caused by rolling contact fatigue associate with a small crack, and a special testing method and machine are required to study the small fatigue crack behavior under shear mode loading. It was found by authors that the behaviors of small shear-mode fatigue cracks from the inclusions and the artificial defects could be successfully observed by applying the fully-reversed torsion coupled with static axial compressive stress. However, the servo-hydraulic fatigue testing machine is quite expensive for purchase and maintenance, and large installation space is necessary for the hydraulic and cooling systems. Moreover, the presence of axial compression significantly lowers the frequency of torsional loading, which consequently results in low testing speed. In this study, a cost-effective, space-saving and high-speed fatigue testing method was newly proposed, and the shear-mode fatigue crack growth tests were carried out by using the developed machine. Based on the obtained experimental data, the potential of the new testing machine is discussed.