Micro–macro investigations about the fatigue behavior of pre-hardened 304L steel

Abstract

In this work, the effect of cyclic pre-hardening (CPH) and monotonic pre-hardening (MPH), on the Cyclic Stress–Strain Curve (CSSC) and fatigue are considered. New tension-compression tests on two types of 304L alloys used in nuclear power plants are carried out under the following conditions: (i) strain or stress control near endurance limit; (ii) zero or positive mean stress; (iii) virgin, CPH or MPH specimens. Macroscopic results show a detrimental effect of pre-hardening in strain control and a beneficial one in stress control. Some macroscopic considerations are given to explain this result and the effects of an applied mean stress which differ under stress and strain control. Relations between macroscopic results and microstructures at failure are investigated using SEM and TEM. SEM is used for analysis of fatigue striation space.TEM analyses suggest that cyclic pre-hardening mainly promotes wavy slip during subsequent fatigue testing, while monotonous pre-loading favors planar slip. For CPH case it seems that primary cells which are preserved and refined for the most part during fatigue testing, constitute the hard stable structure. After MPH and subsequent fatigue testing, a hard structure is constituted by embedding of three kinds of microstructures, small twins, small cells, crossing twin systems. The formation of a hard structure creates an important internal stress. Observation shows that in pre-hardened specimens, softening arrays as veins and PSBs are frequent under strain control and rather scarce under stress control. It can be so deduced that the increase of fatigue life by pre-hardening in stress control is related to reduced mean free path of mobile dislocations due to internal stress.The obtained results may help to understand some aspects about linear versus non linear fatigue damage accumulation.