Effect of Stress Ratio and Evaluation of Crack Sizes on Very-High-Cycle-Fatigue Crack Propagation Life Prediction of Carburized Cr-Ni Steel

Abstract

Carburized Cr-Ni steel is widely used in the manufacture of components in many fields due to excellent performance, of which the service life has been a concern. In order to investigate the high-cycle-fatigue and very-high-cycle-fatigue properties of carburized Cr-Ni gear steel, axial loading fatigue tests were performed by QBG-100 with stress ratios of −1, 0 and 0.3. The Generalized Pareto distribution was used to evaluate the inclusion size of carburized Cr-Ni gear steel. Based on the stress ratio and the evaluated crack size, a new fatigue life prediction model for carburized Cr-Ni gear steels was constructed. The results show that the S–N characteristics of carburized Cr-Ni gear steel represent the continuously descending tendency. Based on the long crack propagation threshold and the instability propagation threshold of carburized Cr-Ni gear steel, the sizes of FGA, fisheye and surface smooth area (SSA) can be evaluated, respectively. In addition, the maximum size of surface and interior inclusion of carburized Cr-Ni gear steel are 17.50 μm and 6.46 μm with a cumulative probability of 99.9%. By validating the new established model, the prediction result is acceptable according to the good consistency between the predicted life and the experimental life.