Effect of surface finish on fatigue of austenitic stainless steels
[Thesis]
Al-Shahrani, Saeed
Marrow, Thomas
University of Manchester
2010
Thesis (Ph.D.)
2010
The effect of surface finish on fatigue limit of two types of austenitic stainless steels (AISI 304L and AISI 316L) has been investigated. Fatigue specimens having two different surface conditions were obtained by changing the final cutting condition; annealing was performed to separate the residual stress effects from surface roughness. Electropolished samples were tested as a reference for each material. A generic mechanistic model for short fatigue crack propagation proposed by Navarroand Rios (N-R model) was implemented to assess its suitability for predicting the fatigue behaviour of specimens with various controlled surface conditions, obtained by machining. The surface/material properties required to implement this model were obtained by electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), surface profilometry, hardness testing and X-ray diffraction residual stress measurement. The fatigue limits were determined using rotating-bending by means of the staircase method. The fatigue limits predicted by the N-R fatigue model were compared with the results of the fatigue tests. There was no agreement between the prediction and observations, indicating that the original form of the N-R model is not appropriate for austenitic stainless steels. In AISI 304L, the surface residual stresses are the dominant parameter, allowing prediction of the effects of machining on fatigue resistance while, the surface roughness developed by machining has no significant effect. In AISI 316L, the effect of surface roughness is found to be negligible, with a weaker effect of surface residual stress than has been observed for AISI 304L. Crack nuclei in run-out (>107 cycles) fatigue tests were observed to arrest at twins and martensite packets, developed by fatigue in AISI 316L and AISI 304L, respectively. Good agreement with experiments was achieved by using a modification to the fatigue model, which takes account of the observed effect of the plastic deformation on the microstructure.