Our safety, comfort and peace of mind are heavily dependent upon our capability to prevent, predict or postpone the failure of components and structures on the basis of sound physical principles While the external loadings acting on a material or component are clearly important, There are other contributory factors including unfavourable materials microstructure, pre-existing defects and residual stresses Residual stresses can add to, or subtract from, the applied stresses and so when unexpected failure occurs it is often because residual stresses have combined critically with the applied stresses, or because together with the presence of undetected defects they have dangerously lowered the applied stress at which failure will occur Consequently it is important that the origins of residual stress are understood, opportunities for removing harmful or introducing beneficial residual stresses recognized, their evolution in-service predicted, their influence on failure processes understood and safe structural integrity assessments made, so as to either remove the part prior to failure, or to take corrective action to extend life This paper reviews the progress in these aspects in the light of the basic failure mechanisms

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Residual stress and its role in failure

The paper reviews published data which address the effect of machining (conventional and non-conventional processes) and the resulting workpiece surface topography/integrity on fatigue performance, for a variety of workpiece materials. The effect of post-machining surface treatments, such as shot peening, are also detailed. The influence of amplitude height parameters (Ra, Rt), amplitude distribution (Rsk) and shape (Rku) parameters, as well as spatial (Std, Sal) and hybrid (Ssc) measures, are considered.

There is some disagreement in the literature about the correlation between workpiece surface roughness and fatigue life. In most cases, it has been reported that lower roughness results in longer fatigue life, but that for roughness values in the range 2.5–5 μm Ra it is primarily dependent on workpiece residual stress and surface microstructure, rather than roughness. In the absence of residual stress, machined surface roughness in excess of 0.1 μm Ra has a strong influence on fatigue life. Temperatures above 400 °C reduce the effects of both residual stress and surface roughness on fatigue, due to stress relieving and the change in crack initiation from the surfaces to internal sites. The presence of inclusions an order of magnitude larger than the machined surface roughness generally overrides the effect of surface topography.

The effect of machined topography and integrity on fatigue life

Investigation of residual stress relaxation under cyclic load

Titanium matrix composites (TMCs) offer high specific strength and stiffness compared with steel and nickel-base materials. High-temperature TMCs can offer up to 50% weight reduction relative to monolithic superalloys while maintaining equivalent strength and stiffness in jet engine propulsion systems. Regardless of the reinforcements are continuous fibres or discontinuous particulates, the unique properties of TMCs have thrust them to the forefront of extensive research and development programmes around the world. Even though TMCs are one of the most studied and sought-after material systems, useful information about their properties, fabrication methods and design is scattered in the literature. This review covers important research work that has led to the advances in TMCs material systems. It also provides comprehensive details about common reinforcements, manufacturing processes, and reviews static and dynamic properties of some common TMCs. The review also presents common industrial applications of TMCs and highlights the promising outlook of TMCs.

Titanium metal matrix composites: An overview

Many manufacturing processes can induce residual stresses in components. These residual stresses influence the mean stress during cyclic loading and so can influence the fatigue life. However, the initial residual stresses induced during manufacturing may not remain stable during the fatigue life. This paper provides a broad and extensive literature survey addressing the stability of surface and near-surface residual stress fields during fatigue, including redistribution and relaxation due to static mechanical load, repeated cyclic loads, thermal exposure and crack extension. The implications of the initial and evolving residual stress state for fatigue behaviour and life prediction are addressed, with special attention to fatigue crack growth. This survey is not a critical analysis; no detailed attempt is made to evaluate the relative merits of the different explanations and models proposed, to propose new explanations or models or to provide quantitative conclusions. Primary attention is given to the residual stresses resulting from four major classes of manufacturing operations: shot peening and related surface treatments, cold expansion of holes, welding and machining.

A literature survey on the stability and significance of residual stresses during fatigue

Cumulative fatigue damage modeling-crack nucleation and early growth

Serrated flow was observed in Inconel 718 during strain controlled fatigue at room temperature when tested after a double aging treatment. The material was also tested in the solution annealed condition. In both conditions, unlocking type serrations were seen in the plastic portions of stress-strain hysteresis loops, from the beginning until the end of the fatigue life. The back stress, exerted by accumulated parallel pile-ups of dislocations in planar slip bands and subsequent relaxation of internal stress by initiating new plastic flow in adjacent grains, is proposed to be the cause of serrated flow in this alloy at room temperature.

Serrated flow and deformation substructure at room temperature in Inconel 718 superalloy during strain controlled fatigue

The effects of strain rate (4 x 10(exp -6) to 4 x 10(exp -3)/s) and temperature on the Low-Cycle Fatigue (LCF) behavior of alloy 800H have been evaluated in the range 750 C to 950 C. Total axial strain controlled LCF tests were conducted in air at a strain amplitude of +/- 0.30 pct. LCF life decreased with decreasing strain rate and increasing temperature. The cyclic stress response behavior showed a marked variation with temperature and strain rate. The time- and temperature- dependent processes which influence the cyclic stress response and life have been identified and their relative importance assessed. Dynamic strain aging, time-dependent deformation, precipitation of parallel platelets of M(23)C6 on grain boundaries and incoherent ledges of twins, and oxidation were found to operate depending on the test conditions. The largest effect on life was shown by oxidation processes.

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Temperature and strain-rate effects on low-cycle fatigue behavior of alloy 800H

Many technologically important elevated temperature service cycles are non-isothermal. Nevertheless, major design codes rely on the most severe-usually the highest-temperature of an operational cycle as being the pertinent temperature upon which to base a design. Consequently, most high-temperature fatigue data for design have been generated under isothermal conditions. There is a growing awareness of the potential inadequacy of such a simplistic approach since many thermomechanical fatigue results have been found to exhibit considerably lower fatigue lives than would be expected on the basis of isothermal results at the maximum cycle temperature. Yet, variable-temperature, low-cycle fatigue tests are difficult to conduct and to interpret. The considerable gap between isothermal and thermomechanical fatigue technology can be bridged by an approach which retains the simplicity and ease of interpretation of isothermal fatigue, but captures many of the first order effects of the greater complexities involved in thermo-mechanical fatigue. We have developed a procedure for conducting what has been designated as bithermal fatigue experiments. In this procedure, the tensile and compressive halves of the cycle are conducted isothermally at two significantly different temperatures. The higher temperature is chosen to be in the time-dependent creep and oxidation prone regime and the lower temperature in the regime wherein time dependencies are minimized due to lack of thermal activation. Interestingly, bithermal fatigue tests prior to those performed for this paper have been conducted in conjunction with the evaluation of the isothermal Strainrange Partitioning characteristics of high-temperature alloys, not with thermomechanical behavior per se. Nevertheless, the bithermal fatigue test may well be used as an alternative to thermomechanical cycling. In this paper, we place emphasis on using the bithermal testing concept as a link between isothermal and thermomechanical testing. New bithermal fatigue data for the nickel-base superalloy B1900 + Hf are presented herein.

Gary R. Halford

Papers

Investigation of residual stress relaxation under cyclic load

Cumulative fatigue damage modeling-crack nucleation and early growth

Serrated flow and deformation substructure at room temperature in Inconel 718 superalloy during strain controlled fatigue

Temperature and strain-rate effects on low-cycle fatigue behavior of alloy 800H

Bithermal fatigue: A link between isothermal and thermomechanical fatigue. Discussion