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Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

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Materials Science & Engineering A


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/msea

General relation between tensile strength and fatigue strength


of metallic materials
J.C. Pang, S.X. Li, Z.G. Wang, Z.F. Zhang n
Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 72 Wenhua Road, Shenyang 110016, China

a r t i c l e i n f o abstract

Article history: With the development of high-strength materials, the existing fatigue strength formulae cannot
Received 8 May 2012 satisfactorily describe the relation between fatigue strength sw and tensile strength sb of metallic
Received in revised form materials with a wide range of strength. For a simple but more precise prediction, the tensile and
7 November 2012
fatigue properties of SAE 4340 steel with the tensile strengths ranging from 1290 MPa to 2130 MPa
Accepted 27 November 2012
Available online 1 December 2012
obtained in virtue of different tempering temperatures were studied in this paper. Based on the
experimental results of SAE 4340 steel and numerous other data available (conventional and newly
Keywords: developed materials), through introducing a sensitive factor of defects P, a new universal fatigue
High-strength materials strength formula sw sb(C  Pdsb) was established for the rst time. Combining the variation tendency
Tensile strength
of fatigue crack initiation sites and the competition of defects, the fatigue damage mechanisms
Fatigue strength
associated with different tensile strengths and cracking sites are explained well. The decrease in the
Fatigue crack initiation site
Fatigue damage mechanism fatigue strength at high-strength level can be explained by fracture mechanics and attributed to the
transition of fatigue cracking sites from surface to the inner inclusions, resulting in the maximum
fatigue strength smax
w at an appropriate tensile strength level. Therefore, the universal fatigue strength
formula cannot only explain why many metallic materials with excessively high strength do not display
high fatigue strength, but also provide a new clue for designing the materials or eliminating the
processing defects of the materials.
& 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction followed a simple proportional relation as below [8],


sw 0:40:5sb 1
Fatigue is referred to the degradation of mechanical properties
leading to failure of a material or a component under cyclic Based on the numerous data of fatigue strength and tensile
loading. The fatigue strength of materials is often dened as the strength available for steels, copper and aluminum alloys [24] in
maximum stress amplitude without failure after a given number the past century, a more general form can be summarized as
of cycles (e.g., 107 or 109). It is estimated that  90% of service follows,
failures of metallic components resulted from fatigue. However, it sw msb 2
is very time and money consuming to perform fatigue tests.
However, it is found that the fatigue strength either maintains
Therefore, many attempts have been made to determine the
constant or decreases with further increasing the tensile strength
fatigue strength in a cost-effective way relating fatigue strength
[3,4]; in other words, the linear relation in Eq. (2) is no longer held
to other mechanical properties, such as yield strength [1], tensile
at high-strength level. The critical tensile strength sbc, above
strength [24], hardness [57] and so on; accordingly, the rela-
which fatigue strength does not increase correspondingly, the
tions between fatigue strength and other mechanical properties
maximum fatigue strengths smax w and the coefcient m in Eq. (2)
have been of more interest. Engineers and scientists have pro-
for steels, Cu and Al alloys are summarized from Refs. [24]. It is
posed many formulae to describe the relations between fatigue
apparent that the linear equation cannot adequately be applied to
strength and other mechanical properties [17]. In 1870s, Wohler,
estimate the fatigue strength of those high-strength materials.
one of the pioneers in the fatigue eld, found that the ratio of
On the other hand, in 1980s, another important nding by
fatigue strength sw to tensile strength sb for ferrous metals
Murakami [5] is that there is a quantitative relationship among
p
fatigue strength sw, hardness Hv and inclusion size area in high-
strength steels. Soon after, many related tests have been done by
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: 86 24 23971043; fax: 86 24 23891320. ultrasonic fatigue testing machines [6,7,920] and some modied
E-mail address: zhfzhang@imr.ac.cn (Z.F. Zhang). fatigue strength formulae were proposed by Wang et al. [9], Liu

0921-5093/$ - see front matter & 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.msea.2012.11.103
332 J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

et al. [10] and McGreevy et al. [21]; nevertheless, no report


indicated that those relations suit for other high-strength materi-
als. In addition, the fatigue strength is found to have linear
relation with hardness or the sum of tensile and yield strengths
only in lower strength range [25]. In a word, there is also no
suitable formula to satisfactorily describe the general relation
between tensile and fatigue strengths of both high- and low-
strength materials.
During recent decades, many new high-strength materials,
such as bulk metallic glasses [22], ultrane or nano-grained
materials [2326] and ultra-high strength steels [27] have been
successfully developed; however, their fatigue strengths are
found to be not as high as we expected, even become relatively
lower in comparison with their higher tensile strength [2732].
Therefore, this gives rise to two open questions for scientists and
engineers: (1) Why do the materials with excessively high tensile Fig. 1. Conguration of specimens tested for: (a) tensile strength; (b) VHC fatigue
strength not possess high fatigue strength? (2) Is there a more strength.
universal equation to describe the general relation between
fatigue strength and tensile strength in a wide strength range?
Therefore, in this study, SAE 4340 steel with a very wide tensile scanning electron microscope (LEO SUPRA35). The fatigue fracto-
strength range, one of the excellent quenched and tempered low- graphies were observed by using a Quanta 600 scanning electron
alloy steels [25,3336], was employed to study and establish a microscope (SEM).
simple but more precise relation between fatigue strength and
tensile strength of materials and provide a better clue for the
design of high-performance structural materials. 3. Results

3.1. Microstructures
2. Experimental material and procedures
With increasing the tempering temperature, the body-
centered tetragonal (BCT) martensite, which is a supersaturated
In the current study, SAE 4340 steel bars were received with a
solution of carbon in a-Fe, transforms to different microstructures
diameter of 14 mm under annealing condition and its composition
as shown in Fig. 2. Referring to the textbook [36,37] and XRD
is given in Table 1. To gain different strength levels, ve optimized
proles, the microstructure features of sample AE are illustrated
heat-treatment procedures as shown in Table 2 were employed
as follows: the sample A tempered at 180 1C contains many
and the corresponding specimens are dened as AE, respectively.
needle- or plate-shaped tempered martensites (see Fig. 2(a))
The congurations of the tensile and fatigue specimens are shown
and some retained austenites. The sample B tempered at 250 1C
in Fig. 1. All fatigue samples were polished in the longitudinal
consists of microstructure (Fig. 2(b)) similar to that of the sample
direction using an emery paper having a mesh of 2000#.
A, but the size of retained austenite decreases because of its
The tensile tests were conducted at a strain rate of 2  10  4 s  1;
decomposition; however, the sample C tempered at 350 1C only
very high-cycle (VHC) fatigue tests were conducted at a frequency of
displays needle- or plate-shaped tempered martensite. The sam-
20 kHz up to 109 cycles using a ultrasonic fatigue testing system
ples D and E, respectively tempered at 420 1C and 500 1C, exhibit
(Shimadzu USF-2000). To avoid the sample heating, the middle
tempered troostite with plate-like appearance (Fig. 2(d) and (e)),
section of each ultrasonic fatigue specimen was cooled by com-
and the lath width of troostite in sample E increases in compar-
pressed air. All fatigue tests were performed with the sinusoidal
ison with sample D because a phase has obviously recovered after
wave shape under applied stress ratio of R  1. The fatigue
tempering above 400 1C.
strength was determined by the staircase method in which at least
six pairs of specimens were tested according to ISO12107:2003.
The microstructures of the specimens with different strength levels 3.2. Tensile properties
were examined by electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) with
After different tempering procedures, the specimens A to E
Table 1 exhibit different tensile properties and their tensile stressstrain
Chemical composition of SAE 4340 steel (Wt%). curves are shown in Fig. 3(a). It can be seen that the specimens A to
E display different yield strength, work-hardening ability, ultimate
C Mn Si P S Cr Ni Mo Cu As tensile strength and elongation. Fig. 3(b) and (c) show the relations
0.42 0.66 0.25 0.009 0.014 0.74 1.41 0.17 0.11 0.034
among the strength, elongation to fracture and reduction in area
versus tempering temperature: it can be seen that as tempering
temperature increases, tensile strength successively decreases,
however, elongation to fracture and reduction in area successively
Table 2 increase, which are in agreement with other steels [34,35,38].
Heat-treatment procedures of SAE 4340 steel. On the other hand, the yield strength rst increases slightly
and then decreases, which agrees with 300 M steel [39] and some
No. Quenching Tempering
other ultrahigh-strength steels tempered below 200 1C [34,35].
A preheating to 850 1C 180 1C tempering for 120 min Fig. 3(d) demonstrates the relationships of yield strength and
B for 10 min and quenching in oil 250 1C tempering for 120 min tensile strength versus elongation to failure of the SAE 4340 steel.
C 350 1C tempering for 120 min As tensile and yield strengths increase, elongation to failure
D 420 1C tempering for 30 min continuously decreases, which is consistent with the trade-offs
E 500 1C tempering for 30 min
between strength and elongation of steels [34,35]. By comparison,
J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341 333

Fig. 2. EBSD microstructures of SAE 4340 steel processed at different tempering temperature: (a) 180 1C; (b) 250 1C; (c) 350 1C; (d) 420 1C and (e) 500 1C.

Fig. 3. Tensile properties of SAE 4340 steel: (a) tensile engineering stressstrain curves; (b) the relation between strength and tempering temperature; (c) relations of
elongation and reduction in area vs. the tempering temperature and (d) relation between strength and elongation to fracture.

the elongation to failure of specimen C appears smaller because of of VHC fatigue. There are four types of crack origin modes:
the tempering brittleness at 350 1C [33]. (a) surface scratch; (b) surface inclusion; (c) subsurface inclusion;
(d) inner inclusion, which are in accordance with the crack
3.3. Fatigue properties initiation modes of high-strength steels [5,6]. Besides, special
granular bright and rough area in comparison with other area,
Six groups of VHC fatigue tests (the highest strength level was which is named as Granular-bright-facet (GBF) by Shiozawa et al.
repeated once more) were conducted to obtain the fatigue [40], appears around the inclusion, as indicated by the blue cycle
strengths by the staircase method. Fig. 4 shows the crack origin in Fig. 4(d), but is not shown in Fig. 4(c).
334 J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

Fig. 4. Crack origin of VHC fatigue: (a) surface scratch; (b) surface inclusion; (c) subsurface inclusion and (d) inner inclusion.

different conditions. It is found that the VHC fatigue strengths


increase rst and then decrease with increasing tensile strength,
which is consistent with that of the CuBe alloy after different
ageing technologies [41]. The highest fatigue strength can be as
high as 693 MPa, which occurs in the specimen B with a tensile
strength of 1830 MPa that is not the highest tensile strength,
implying that a higher tensile strength of materials cannot always
lead to a higher fatigue strength, which is also found in other
high-strength materials [2732,41]. In contrast, as the tensile
strength increases to a certain extent, a decrease in fatigue
strength can be observed, for example, the specimen A with the
highest tensile strength of 2124 MPa has a fatigue strength of
655 MPa, which is lower than the fatigue strength (693 MPa) of
Fig. 5. Relation between the VHC fatigue crack sites ratio and tensile strength.
the specimen B with a tensile strength of 1830 MPa (see Fig. 6a).
In order to conrm such results, a repeated VHC fatigue test
was conducted and a fatigue strength of 657 MPa was obtained,
Broadly speaking, according to the fatigue cracking site, the which implies that the fatigue testing result for the steel with
four crack initiation modes can be classied into two types: i.e., the highest tensile strength but with lower fatigue strength is
surface (surface scratch, surface/subsurface inclusion) and inner reliable.
(inner inclusion). Fig. 5 displays the statistic ratio of surface and
inner cracking sites for VHC fatigue test: the ratio of inner
cracking sites (RICS, the ratio of the number of samples originated 3.4. Fatigue strength formula
from the inner inclusion site to the total number of failure
samples) gradually increases with increasing tensile strength; For better understanding on the varying trend of fatigue
however, when tensile strength is lower than 1200 MPa, RICS strength for the materials at different tensile strength levels, it
tends to zero, when the tensile strength is higher than is necessary to nd a general fatigue strength formula to describe
2000 MPa, RICS tends to 100%. The ratio of surface cracking the intrinsic relation between fatigue strength and tensile
sites (RSCS, the ratio of the number of samples originated from strength. Fig. 6(b) demonstrates that the fatigue ratio R (the ratio
surface site to the total number of failure samples) gradually of fatigue strength sw to tensile strength sb) gradually declines
decreases as tensile strength increases; when tensile strength is
with increasing tensile strength. From the data in Fig. 6(b), it is
higher than  2000 MPa, RSCS tends to zero. This indicates that interesting to nd that the fatigue ratio R declines approximately
when tensile strength is lower than  1200 MPa, nearly all the
in a linear relation with increasing tensile strength. To conrm
fatigue cracks originated from surface defects; when tensile this tendency, a linear tting is performed and the tting
strength is higher than  2000 MPa, nearly all the fatigue cracks
equation can be expressed as below,
initiated from inner inclusion; when tensile strength is in the
range of 12002000 MPa, there is a gradual transition for fatigue R sw =sb 0:701:85  104 sb 3
crack initiation from surface defects to inner inclusions.
Fig. 6(a) shows the relationship between the fatigue strength As shown in Fig. 6(c), the scope of fatigue ratio is within the 5%
and tensile strength of the SAE 4340 steels heat-treated under error band. The fatigue strength sw in Eq. (3) can be written in
J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341 335

Fig. 6. (a) Relation between tensile and fatigue strengths of the 4340 steel; (b) relation between tensile strength and fatigue ratio; (c) tting relation between tensile
strength and fatigue ratio and (d) tting curves of tensile and fatigue strengths.

a quadratic equation of the tensile strength sb as below, R 0:922:37  104 sb For SAE 4063 5d
therefore, their fatigue strength sw can be expressed in quadratic
sw 0:701:85  104 sb  sb 4
equations of the tensile strength sb as below, respectively
Eq. (4) is drawn in Fig. 6(d), it can be seen that the fatigue
strengths are basically within the 5% error band. This illustrates sw 0:872:65  104 sb  sb For SAE 4140 6a
that Eq. (4) can well describe the general relation between fatigue
strength and tensile strength of the SAE 4340 steel in a wide
sw 0:761:78  104 sb  sb For SAE 4340 6b
strength range.
sw 0:741:89  104 sb  sb For SAE 2340 6c

sw 0:922:37  104 sb  sb For SAE 4063 6d


4. Discussion
Eqs. (6a)(d) are drawn in Fig. 8, it can be seen that the
4.1. Verication of the general fatigue strength formula fatigue strengths are basically within the 5% error band. This
indicates that the quadratic equations can well describe the
In order to conrm the fatigue strength formula above, it is general relation between fatigue strength and tensile strength of
necessary to nd out more fatigue strength data of metallic those steels.
materials available. First, the rotating bending fatigue strength Second, the fatigue strengths of steels with the minimum
data of some high-strength steels with different strength levels in sample diameter of 3 mm at a frequency of 20 kHz up to 109
literature [38] are used to verify the proposed equation. It is noted cycles are collected from Refs. [920]. Those data are also tted
that the tting relations between fatigue ratio and tensile according to the previous method and displayed in Fig. 9 with the
strength for SAE 4140, 4340, 2340 and 4063 steels displayed in following equations,
Fig. 7 are also linear and the scope of fatigue ratio is within the 5%
R 0:671:52  104 sb , 7a
error band, which entirely agrees with the general relation
proposed above. The tting equations can be written as below,
sw 0:67sb 1:52  104 s2b 7b
respectively
The most data of fatigue ratios and fatigue strengths are also
R 0:872:65  104 sb For SAE 4140 5a within the 15% error band, which expresses that the fatigue
strength formula above is also applicable to other steels with a
R 0:761:78  104 sb For SAE 4340 5b very wide range of tensile strength.
From the analysis above, it is wondering whether the relation
R 0:741:89  104 sb For SAE 2340 5c above suits for other steels, even for those non-ferrous metals or
336 J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

Fig. 7. Fitting relation between tensile strength and rotating bending fatigue ratio of high strength steels: (a) SAE 4140; (b) SAE 4340; (c) SAE 2340 and (d) SAE 4063. (Data
are cited from Ref. [38]).

Fig. 8. Fitting relation between tensile strength and rotating bending fatigue strength of high strength steels: (a) SAE 4140; (b) SAE 4340; (c) SAE 2340 and (d) SAE 4063.
(Data are cited from Ref. [38]).
J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341 337

Fig. 9. (a) Fitting relations (a) between tensile strength and fatigue ratio and (b) relation between tensile strength and VHC fatigue strength of steels with the smallest
diameter of 3 mm. Data are from Ref. [920].

not. Thus, many fatigue data of engineering materials, such as After analyzing the fatigue data of four specic materials (SAE
wrought steels, aluminum and copper alloys [3,4] were further 4340, 4140, 2340, 4063) and three types of materials (steels, copper
collected. Fig. 10(a), (c) and (e) shows the tting curves of the alloys, aluminum alloys) the two general conclusions can be drawn:
fatigue ratios of wrought steels, copper alloys and aluminum (1) the relation between fatigue ratios and tensile strengths is linear;
alloys available, and the tting equations can be expressed as (2) the relation between fatigue strengths and tensile strengths is
follows, respectively, quadratic. Therefore, Eqs. (3), (7a), (10a) (5a)(d) and (8a)(c) can be
expressed in the general form as below,
R 0:611:24  104 sb For wrought steels, 8a
R CP  sb 11
R 0:543:72  104 sb For wrought Cu alloys 8b where C and P are two constants; moreover, each material has its
own constants as listed in Table 3. Furthermore, Eqs. (4), (7b), (10b)
R 0:535:66  104 sb For aluminum alloys 8c (9a)(c) and (6a)(d), can be unied in a more universal formula as
It can be seen that most data of fatigue ratios are also within below,
the 20% error band and the relation between the fatigue ratio and sw CP  sb  sb 12
tensile strength of metallic materials still looks like linear. Based
on the results, the fatigue strength sw for the three kinds of
materials can be separately tted by the following quadratic
4.2. Fatigue damage mechanism of materials
equations:

sw 0:611:24  104 sb  sb For wrought steels 9a To reveal the reasons caused the results above, it is necessary
to further study the fatigue damage mechanism of the high-
sw 0:543:72  104 sb  sb For wrought Cu alloys 9b strength steel. Since it is inevitable that the real materials contain
different kinds of defects [2,5], they can be roughly categorized
into two types: one is the intrinsic defect (ID), such as vacancies,
sw 0:535:66  104 sb  sb For aluminum alloys 9c
interstitial atoms, dislocations, stacking faults (SF), grain bound-
In Fig. 10(b), (d) and (f), most fatigue strength sw data are aries (GB) and so on, as illustrated in Fig. 12. The IDs are related to
within the 20% error band, which tells us that the fatigue strength the materials itself and can not be completely avoided by the
formula above is also appropriate for the conventional engineer- technology innovation of processing or by controlling the forma-
ing materials. tion of microstructure. The other is the processing defect (PD),
Recently, many new high-strength materials have been suc- including nonmetallic inclusions, cavities, segregation and
cessfully developed as mentioned above. We curiously know scratches etc, as shown in Fig. 12. The PDs are associated with
whether the quadratic relation applies to them or not. However, the technology of production or processing and can be avoided in
there is almost no fatigue data of the identical materials with practice to some extent.
varying tensile strength in a very wide range. Luckily, we have First, for the low-strength ductile materials, fatigue cracks
carried out some fatigue tests on ultrane grained low carbon normally do not nucleate at PDs (inclusion or scratch), but at slip
steel [42], and collected some fatigue data of coarse grained bands (SB) or GBs [46] on the sample surface (see Fig. 12). The
[43,44] and ultrane grained [42,44,45] low-carbon steels and materials with ID and without PD can be regarded as ideal ones
analyzed them as shown in Fig. 11. The tting relations between because ID mainly controls the microstructure and determines
tensile strength and fatigue ratio as well as fatigue strength can the main mechanical properties. Therefore, for the ideal materials,
be written as below: the fatigue strength sw might only depend on its IDs and the
corresponding ideal fatigue strength sIw should show a propor-
R 0:602:13  104  sb For low carbon steel, 10a
tional correlation with its tensile strength sb i.e.,

sw 0:602:13  104 sb  sb For low carbon steel 10b sIw C  sb 13

The data of fatigue ratios and fatigue strengths are also within where, sIw : ideal fatigue strength; C: a constant, which agrees
the 10% error band. This indicates that the fatigue strength with the proportional relation in intrinsic aw regime [21], where
formula also ts the low-carbon steel. intrinsic aw is ID mentioned above.
338 J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

Fig. 10. Fitting relations of the rotating bending fatigue ratio and fatigue strength vs. tensile strength for different engineering materials, (a) and (b) for wrought steels at
106 cycles; (c) and (d) for copper alloys at 108 cycles; (e) and (f) for aluminum alloys at 5  108 cycles. (Data are collected from Ref. [3,4]).

For the grain-renement strengthening, the smaller grain size strength also follows the HallPetch relation [24,25] as blew,
is, the larger will be the total boundary surface area per unit
1
volume. Therefore, this can increase the pileup of dislocation and sw p p 15
D
make the motion of dislocation difcult, resulting in the increase
of tensile strength, as explained by the well-known HallPetch Therefore, the relation between tensile strength and fatigue
relation. Therefore, the relation between tensile strength and strength can be regarded as linear, which can be veried by
grain size D  1/2 is linear, which can be expressed as the experimental results of some ultrane-grained materials in
Refs. [25,26].
1 Second, for the high-strength materials, fatigue cracks do not
sb p p 14
D frequently initiate along SB or GBs and other IDs, but at PDs
(inclusion or scratch in Fig. 12). At this time, the fatigue strength
For fatigue strength, small sized grains can lead to the reduced of materials can be considered as PD-controlled, and the effects of
aw sizes and increase difculties for the imposed stress con- IDs on fatigue strength could be minied to some extent. If the
centration at the aw to exceed the critical stress of the material, material can be considered as an isotropic solid with a crack,
thus suppressing early crack nucleation and propagation. Fatigue hence the fracture mechanics can be applied. By which, Murakami
J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341 339

Fig. 11. (a) Relation between tensile strength and fatigue ratio and (b) relation between tensile strength and fatigue strength: CG [43,44], UFG [42,44,45].

Table 3
Values of the constants C, P, M and E and corresponding sbc and smax here, K Imax is the applied stress intensity factor given in MPa m1/2,
w . p
where sa is the applied stress (MPa) and area is crack size (m).
Material C P/10  4 M E/GPa sbc /MPa smax
w /MPa Error The threshold for crack growth can be written [5]
MPa  1 band (%)
p1=3
Our work 0.70 1.85 38.5 208 1891 662 75
DK th 3:3  103 HV 120 area 17
SAE 4140 0.87 2.65 54.9 207 1642 714 75 p
SAE 4340 0.76 1.78 37.0 208 2135 811 75 where DKth is in MPa m1/2 and HVis in kgf mm  2, and area is in
SAE 2340 0.74 1.89 39.1 207 1958 724 75 mm. When K Imax DKth, the fatigue strength can be determined.
SAE 4063 0.92 2.37 49.1 207 1941 893 75 Combining Eqs. (16) and (17), and noticing the difference of the
Steel alloya 0.67 1.52 31.5 207 2204 738 7 15 p
Steel alloyb 0.61 1.24 25.7 207 2460 750 7 20
unit of the area between those equations, the fatigue strength
LC Steelc 0.60 2.13 45.3 208 1408 423 7 10 sw can be expressed as below [48],
Cu alloy 0.54 3.72 44.3 119 726 196 7 20
p1=6
Al alloy 0.53 5.66 40.6 71.7 468 124 7 20 sw C HV 120= area 18
a
VHC fatigue under tension and compression.
b
Rotating bending fatigue.
where, C: material constant relative to crack initiation site.
c
Low carbon steel. Eq. (18) is widely used to predict the fatigue strength of high-
strength steel with inclusion. While, the fatigue strength mea-
sured by staircase method is a statistical value; If the specimens
were prepared with the same batch of steel bars but different heat
treatments, the average inclusion sizes contained in those speci-
mens should be close to each other. Therefore, the inclusion size
p
area in Eq. (18) can be considered as a constant, thus, Eq. (18)
becomes

sw C 00 Hv 120 19

C0
where, C 00 p 1=6 . In practice, the hardness Hv and tensile
area
strength sb show linear relation [2,39]; so that Eq. (19) is
approximately consistent with Eq. (13). It implies that the rela-
tion between tensile strength and fatigue strength of one mate-
rial, no matter whether in low-strength level or in high-strength
level, is still linear in theory.
However, a question is raised as below. For our fatigue test, the
specimens A to E were prepared with the same batch of steel bars
but different heat treatments, the inclusion size contained in
Fig. 12. Schematic illustration of fatigue mechanisms and strength formula with those specimens should be the same in the statistical meaning.
tensile strength increasing. Therefore, the inuence of the inclusion size on fatigue strength
of those specimens could be neglected. According to Eqs. (13) or
(19), the fatigue strength should be proportional to the tensile
et al. [5] found a well-known fatigue strength formula related to strength; however, it is inconsistent with the experiment results
p
the parameters such as hardness Hv and the inclusion size area as mentioned above. The reason may be as follows. By analyzing
as detail below. If the area of a crack at inclusion is denoted by of the relation between DKth and tensile strength sb of 300 M
area, then the maximum value, K Imax of the stress intensity factor steel in Ref. [49], as shown Fig. 13, it is found that DKth linearly
along its crack front is given approximately by [47] decreases with tensile strength sb increasing. The linear relation
q can be written in the form like:
p
K Imax 0:5sa p area 16
DK th pC 1 C 2  sb 20
340 J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341

inuence of PDs. Eq. (2) has been widely applied to most


engineering materials [25]. This can be named as main ID regime
(see Fig. 12). With further increasing the tensile strength, in this
case, sPw becomes so large (violet line in Fig. 12) that the inuence
of PD on the fatigue strength is signicant; therefore, in this
tensile strength level it is dened as main PD regime (see Fig. 12).
In this regime, the fatigue cracks often nucleate at scratches,
surface or subsurface inclusion (SI), internal inclusion (II), and
even that crack initiation at internal inclusion becomes the main
event in those high-strength steels [5,6] with tensile strength
increasing (main PD regime, light green zone in Fig. 12). The
fatigue strength is signicantly affected by the size of inclusions
[5,7]. If the inclusion size is very different, the fatigue data will be
very scatter and Eq. (18) can suit well.
Fig. 13. Relation between threshold stress intensity range DKth at R 0.05 and
When the tensile strength reaches very high level, nearly all
tensile strength of 300 M steel tempered by different temperatures, adapted from fatigue cracks originate from PDs (inner inclusion, segregation), sPw
Ref. [49]. becomes very large, which can be called as PD regime shown in
Fig. 12. As tensile strength increasing, the critical inclusion size [50]
where, C1 and C2 are material constants. The decrease of DKth can of steels becomes smaller and smaller, more and more inclusions
be also attributed to the enhancement of defect sensitivity with can become fatigue crack initiation sites and the fatigue sensitivity
tensile strength increasing. to defects is much more serious [5]. Therefore, fatigue strength
Now, the resistance DKth for fatigue crack growth near an decreases as tensile strength further increases.
inclusion in steels with a wide strength range should be modied.
Here, as an assumption, the DKth in Eq. (17) is modied as 4.3. Prediction of the maximum fatigue strength
p1=3  0 
DK th C HV 120 area C 1 C 02 sb 21
If introducing Youngs modulus E of materials into Eq. (24),
Combining Eqs. (16) and (21), the fatigue strength formula can one can get
be written as:
  sPw M  s2b =E M  sb  eb 25
C 0 Hv 120 C 01 C 02  sb
sw 0 p1=6 22 where MP  E, eb can be dened as the maximum tensile elastic
area strain. From Eq. (12), the values of the maximum fatigue strength
Considering the inclusion size as a constant in average in all smax
w and critical tensile strength sbc can be obtained as follows:
fatigue tests, and the linear relation between tensile strength sb C2 EC 2
and hardness Hv as mentioned above, Eq. (22) can be further smax
w 26
4P 4M
simplied as Eq. (12), i.e., sw (C P  sb)  sb. This indicates that
to a rst approximation, the quadratic relation can be explained C EC
sbc 27
by fracture mechanics. As for the fatigue damage mechanisms, it 2P 2M
may be illustrated in outline as follows, thus, Eq. (12) can be From Eqs. (26) and (27), it can be concluded that smax and sbc
w
rewritten as are dependent on C, and P or E, C and M. According to their values,
sw CP  sb  sb C sb Ps2b sIw sPw 23 the corresponding smax w and sbc can be calculated, as listed in
Table 3. Compared with the error bands in Table 3, the error
From the analysis above, it is known that the rst term on the bands of one type of materials such as steels, copper or aluminum
right side of Eq. (23), i.e., Eq. (13) as mentioned above, is the ideal alloys are within 20%, which is the maximum. The error bands of
fatigue strength, and it is valid no matter whether in low-strength many steels under the same experimental condition are within
level or in high-strength level, and the parameter C is named as 15%; and within 10% for low-carbon steel, with 5% for a specic
intrinsic factor due to the inuence of the intrinsic defects. On the materials (SAE 4140, 4340, 2340 and 4063), which is minimum.
other hand, the second term in Eq. (23) can be expressed by, This indicates that the less are the inuencing factors of fatigue
experiments, the more accurate the formula predicts. Besides, it is
sPw P  s2b 24
well known that the newly developed high-strength materials
This indicates that the reduction of fatigue strength due to the often possess very poor fatigue properties [2732,41], which can
competitive effects of ID and PD, and the parameter P is named as be explained that their tensile strengths are already greater than
the fatigue sensitivity coefcient to processing defects. their sbc , as illustrated in Fig. 12.
In fact, a real material contains both IDs and PDs. At low- For the quadratic equation, the fatigue strength and the
strength level, sPw is so small that the inuence of PD on fatigue maximum fatigue strength can be designed or improved by
strength can be completely negligible and fatigue cracks appear at adjusting the constants P (M) and C. For example, with surface
SBs or GBs (see Fig. 12); and Eq. (23) becomes equivalent to roughness of specimens increasing, the fatigue strength continu-
Eq. (13), i.e., sw  sIw C  sb , which can be called as ID regime in ously decreases [4]; with the size of inclusion increasing, fatigue
Fig. 12. With increasing the tensile strength, sPw becomes gradu- strength continuously decreases [5,7], which will affect the
ally large (violet line in Fig. 12) and can not be negligible. constant P (M). With renement of grain size, the fatigue strength
However, the inuence of ID on the fatigue strength is still also increases [24], which should make a contribution to constant
dominative, fatigue cracks will emerge from SB, GB, scratches C. Therefore, the universal fatigue formula may not only correctly
and so on, the quadratic Eqs. (12) or (23) can be approximately predict the fatigue strength, but also provide a possible clue to
expressed as Eq. (2), i.e., sw msb, it is similar to Eq. (13) that is improve the fatigue strength by choosing and designing micro-
controlled completely by IDs. However, the coefcient m should structure or eliminating the processing defects of the materials in
be slightly smaller than the constant C in Eq. (13) due to the industry.
J.C. Pang et al. / Materials Science & Engineering A 564 (2013) 331341 341

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