Correlation of Fatigue Limit and Crack Growth Threshold Value to the Nanobainitic Microstructure

Abstract

The recently developed nanobainitic steels show high ultimate tensile strength (UTS) as well as high ductility. Although this combination seems to be desirable for fatigue design, fatigue limit of nanostructured bainite is often disappointingly low. To improve fatigue properties we tried to earn a fundamental understanding of the microstructural parameters governing fatigue behavior.Therefore our hypothesis to improve the fatigue behavior was not necessarily avoiding the initiation of a fatigue crack – which could lead to failure of the material – but to improve the ability of the present microstructure to slow down or stop growing cracks. Thus, the key to understand the fatigue behavior of nanostructured bainite is to understand the role of the microstructural features which could act as barriers for growing cracks.We tried to correlate our results of fatigue tests and analysis of fracture surfaces to the size of microstructural features like bainitic ferrite plates, crystallographic bainite blocks and packets or prior austenite grains, as well as cracks induced at nonmetallic inclusions. Thereby we found that the crystallographic bainite block size governs fatigue behavior. Additionally, threshold values were determined from crack growth experiments and related to the characteristic microstructural features.