Abstract
Four heats of commercially available JIS SNCM439 steel are prepared, and fatigue tests are conducted in air and hydrogen gas. The materials evaluated are all martensitic steel with a tensile strength of 900 MPa or less and contain nonmetallic inclusions of different sizes. A decrease in the fatigue limit is observed in the specimens with large nonmetallic inclusions, but the fatigue limit in air is approximately equal to the fatigue strength at 300,000 cycles in hydrogen. However, in the finite life region, the fatigue life in hydrogen significantly decreases owing to the presence of large nonmetallic inclusions. It was observed that hydrogen considerably affects the fatigue life even at low stress amplitudes close to the fatigue limit. This effect is considered to be dependent on the size of the initial crack originating from the nonmetallic inclusions; large nonmetallic inclusions accelerate the hydrogen-induced fatigue crack growth rate.
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