Studying the Effects of Internal and External Microstructure on Fatigue Strength of Materials by Electromagnetic Excitation Technique

Abstract

A fatigue testing setup based on electromagnetic excitation was built to apply cyclic stresses to the specimens near their resonance frequency. A test near the resonance frequency has the advantage that higher stresses can be applied to test specimens at a reduced input power. Stress amplitude up to 1000 MPa can be applied to the test specimens and up to four specimens can be tested simultaneously. The setup can test specimens at high fatigue cycle regime i.e. 100 million stress cycles can be achieved in 48 hours.The setup has been used to study the effects of internal and external microstructure on the fatigue strength of materials. Specimens especially stainless steel-304 was prepared by different techniques i.e. electric discharge machining EDM, etching and laser cutting. Specimens prepared by these techniques were tested and their fatigue strengths were compared. To probe the material endurance limit, tests were also performed on the above mentioned steel specimens in very high stress cycle regime i.e. > 109 cycles. In order to investigate the effect of internal microstructure on fatigue strength of material, CuZn37 fabricated by etching was tested and the effect of different grain size on fatigue strength was compared. SN curves have been plotted for materials with no prior fatigue strength data. Stainless steel-1.4404 specimens prepared by Rapid Prototyping (RP) has been tested for fatigue analysis. The test results showed higher degree of scattering when compared to the traditionally manufactured steel. Fractography revealed the existence of inherent material flaws which was the main reason of higher degree of test point scattering. In addition to these data, the SN curve was plotted for Innolot which is an important soldering alloy and prompts to fatigue failure in electronic assemblies.