Abstract
Fatigue tests of ultrafine grained (UFG) copper produced by equal channel angular pressing (ECAP) showed negligible enhancement of fatigue strength in high-cycle fatigue regime. This was attributed to the thermal instability of UFG microstructure; a grain coarsening occurred during a large number of stress repetitions. Aiming at an enhancement of fatigue strength in the long-life field in excess of 107 cycles, post-ECAP mild-annealing for improving thermal stability was conducted. Grains with sizes up to a few tens of micrometers surrounded by fine grains were formed after the annealing as a result of discontinuous recrystallization. The improved stability of post-ECAP annealed micrstrucvture was related to the 9% increased fatigue strength in long life fields. The effect of bimodal microstructure on surface damage formation and fatigue strength was discussed.
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