The fatigue life of numerous aerospace,locomotive,automotive and biomedical structures may go beyond 10~8 cycles.Determination of long life fatigue behavior becomes extremely important for better understanding and design of the components and structures.Initially,before the invention of ultrasonic fatigue testing,most of the engineering materials were supposed to exhibit fatigue life up to 10~7 cycles or less.This paper reviews current understanding of some fundamental aspects on the development of accelerated fatigue testing method and its application in ultra-high cycle fatigue,crack initiation and growth mechanisms of internal fracture,S-N diagram,fatigue limit and life prediction, etc.
The low cycle fatigue （LCF） behavior of a high-strength structural steel was investigated in the strain rate range of 4×10^-6 -0.12 s^-1 （0. 001-3 Hz） under constant total strain （±1%） control. The cyclic stress response at all strain rates exhibited behavior of rapid softening in the early stage of fatigue life and subsequent saturation up to failure. It was found that the stress amplitude, the plastic strain amplitude, the plastic strain energy density and the fatigue life depend mainly on the strain rate. The strain rate of 0. 012 s-1 was found as a transition point where the LCF of the steel showed different behavior from low strain rate to high strain rate. The relationship between the time to failure and strain rate was expressed well by a power law relation. The fracture surfaces of the fatigue sam-ples were characterized by using a scanning electron microscope （SEM） and the fracture mechanisms were discussed in terms of time-dependent deformation of the steel.
LUO Yun-rongHUANG Chong-xiangTIAN Ren-huiWANG Qing-yuan
Very high cycle fatigue behavior （107 --109 cycles） of 304L austenitic stainless steel was studied with ultra- sonic fatigue testing system （20 kHz）. The characteristics of fatigue crack initiation and propagation were discussed based on the observation of surface plastic deformation and heat dissipation. It was found that micro-plasticity （slip markings） could be observed on the specimen surface even at very low stress amplitudes. The persistent slip mark- ings increased clearly along with a remarkable process of heat dissipation just before the fatigue failure. By detailed investigation using a scanning electron microscope and an infrared camera, slip markings appeared at the large grains where the fatigue crack initiation site was located. The surface temperature around the fatigue crack tip and the slip markings close to the fracture surface increased prominently with the propagation of fatigue crack. Finally, the cou- pling relationship among the fatigue crack propagation, appearance of surface slip markings and heat dissipation was analyzed for a better understanding of ultrasonic fatigue damage behavior.
Chao HERen-hui TIANYong-jie LIUJiu-kai LIQing-yuan WANG
Energy-based models for predicting the low-cycle fatigue life of high-strength structural steels are presented. The models are based on energy dissipation during average of cycles, cycles to crack propagation and total cycles to failure. Plastic strain energy per cycle was determined and found as an important characteristic for initiation and propagation of fatigue cracks for high-strength structural steels. Fatigue strain-life curves were generated using plastic energy dissipation per cycle (loop area) and compared with the Coffin-Manson relation. Low cycle fatigue life was found similar from both methods. The material showed Masing-type behavior. The cyclic hysterisis energy per cycle was calculated from cyclic stress-strain parameters. The fracture surfaces of the fatigue samples were characterized by scanning electron microscope and the fracture mechanisms were discussed.
LUO Yun-rong1,2, HUANG Chong-xiang1, GUO Yi2, WANG Qing-yuan1 (1. College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, Sichuan, China
