High-strength Steel Wires Research Articles

Fatigue life evaluation of high-strength steel wires with multiple corrosion pits based on the TCD

The stay cable composed of high-strength steel wires is susceptible to external corrosion during service, and multiple pitting damage will occur on the surface of steel wires. For the sake of simplifying the pitting morphology, this paper used artificial notches to simulate corrosion pits, and the fatigue properties of high-strength steel wires with multiple notches were systematically studied. First, fatigue tests of steel wires with multiple pits were performed, and the finite element models were established by ABAQUS software. The fitting equations related to stress concentration factor (SCF) and corrosion pit parameters were obtained. Subsequently, the fatigue life of corroded high-strength steel wires was predicted by the Point method (PM) and the Line method (LM) originated from the Theory of Critical Distances (TCD). Finally, the prediction results compared with the experimental results. The results show that the fatigue life of steel wires with a single pit is mainly related to the pit depth-to-length ratio. The fatigue life of steel wires with double pits located on the same side mainly depends on deeper pits, but it slightly decreases as the increase of the depth of shallow pits. The effect of the spacing of double pits is very small. The fatigue life of steel wires with double pits in the circumferential direction decreases as the angle between the double pits increases. The reliability of the TCD for fatigue evaluation of multi-notch components is verified.

Modified Johnson–Cook model of SWRH82B steel under different manufacturing and cold-drawing conditions

In this study, the parameters of the Johnson-Cook model of SWRH82B steel are determined to describe the dynamic mechanical properties and fracture behaviors of steel wires. A total of 299 specimens are tested to determine the parameters. Quasi-static tensile tests at varying temperatures (20–700 °C) and different strain rates (10−4–10 −2 s −1) and split Hopkinson pressure bar tests are conducted to identify the parameters of the Johnson-Cook model. Notch tensile tests are conducted to calibrate the Johnson-Cook fracture criterion model. The wires made from SWRH82B high-strength steel with different diameters and shapes have different material performance due to different manufacturing and cold-drawing process. Therefore, two cross-section types (circular and Z shapes) and seven diameters of high-strength steel wires are considered for the material characteristic tests. The strain rate hardening effect is not significant at low loading rates but has a remarkable effect at loads exceeding. Analysis of the stress-strain curves at elevated temperatures shows that the thermal softening effect of the two types of wires is evident and that the temperature sensitivity varies in different temperature ranges. In addition, the mechanical performance of circular wires with diameters ranging from 4.0 to 5.2 mm and Z-shaped wires with diameters from 4 to 6 mm are compared. Fractography of SWRH82B high-strength steel is conducted to investigate the failure mechanism at various temperatures and strain loading rates. Finally, an improved Johnson-Cook model is proposed considering the strain hardening of SWRH82B steel wires based on different shapes and diameters.

RETRACTED: Guided ultrasonic wave-based investigation on the transient response in an axisymmetric viscoelastic cylindrical waveguide

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief, for the unauthorized use of third party research data by the author. The author apologizes for the violation of the journal's code of ethics. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication in Ultrasonics is that authors must declare explicitly that their work is original. Use of research outcomes from others without formal permission or without appropriate citation is regarded as an ethical violation. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of Ultrasonics that this was not detected during the submission process.

Fatigue life evaluation model for high-strength steel wire considering different levels of corrosion

This article studies the quantitative influences of corrosion on the fatigue life of high-strength steel wires, considering a wide variation in the degree of corrosion. A multiparameter Weibull model for corrosion-stress-life (C-S-N) is proposed, and the Goodman relation is employed to deal with the dependences of stress ranges on positive stress ratios. Fatigue data are collected from the literature for three groups with different ultimate tensile strengths and the degree of corrosion ranging from 0.18% to 18.67%. This data is then used to estimate the parameters of the Weibull model; subsequently, quantitative influences of corrosion on fatigue life for steel wires with a wide range in the degree of corrosion are illustrated and discussed. The results indicate that the influence of ultimate tensile strengths on fatigue life for corroded steel wire can be ignored, because corrosion causes crack nucleation faster, especially at lower stress ranges. The fatigue life decreases sharply as the corrosion increases, and reduction is much pronounced under a lower stress range. Negative correlation of fatigue life and corrosion increases as the stress range decreases, which further confirms that corrosion has a higher influence at lower stress ranges. The proposed model can provide quantitative evaluation on the fatigue life of steel wires at specified survival probabilities, considering a wide range in the degree of corrosion; these results can be used by engineering designers to ensure the safety for cable-supported bridges during their lifetime.

Deformation Law of Cold Drawing Process of High Strength Bridge Cable Steel

High-strength cable-steel bridge is the “lifeline” of steel structure bridges, which requires high comprehensive mechanical properties, and cold-drawing is the most important process to produce high-strength cable-steel bridge. Therefore, through the ABAQUS platform, a bridge wire drawing model was established, and the simulation analysis on the process of stress strain law and strain path trends for high-strength bridge steel wire from Φ 12.65 mm by seven cold-drawing to Φ 6.90 mm was conducted. The simulation results show that the wire drawing the heart of the main axial deformation, surface and sub-surface of the main axial and radial deformation occurred, with the increase in the number of drawing the road, the overall deformation of the wire was also more obvious non-uniformity. In the single-pass drawing process, the change in the potential relationship of each layer of material was small, and multiple inflection points appeared in the strain path diagram; the change in the seven-pass potential relationship was more drastic, which can basically be regarded as a simple superposition of multiple single-pass pulls.

Correction: Xue, S.; Shen, R. Corrosion-Fatigue Analysis of High-Strength Steel Wire by Experiment and the Numerical Simulation. Metals 2020, 10, 734

The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper [...]

Failure analysis of high-strength steel wire under random corrosion

Given the randomness of corrosion and the variability of the constitutive model under corrosion conditions, the high-strength steel wire is selected as the basic component, and the constitutive model of steel wire is obtained through the tensile test of high-strength steel wire under different corrosion degrees. The innovation of this paper is the generation of random corrosion pits in numerical simulations. The random corrosion model of steel wire is developed by python, and the constitutive model of steel wire under different corrosion degrees is developed by FORTRAN, which is embedded in ABAQUS. The failure modes of high-strength steel wire under different random corrosion were analyzed. The results show that corrosion has little effect on elastic modulus and yield strength of steel wire. The ultimate strength and fracture strain of steel wire are decreased due to corrosion. The steel wire becomes brittle, and the breaking force is greatly reduced.

Investigation on the Causes of Abnormal Fracture of High-Strength Steel Wire

The cause of abnormal fracture of 55SiCr high-strength steel wire rods during storage was analyzed for macroscopic and microscopic morphology, chemical composition, microstructure, mechanical properties and hydrogen content of the sample and the experiment of the hydrogen-charging fracture under the action of pre-stress. Results show that the fracture of 55SiCr high-strength steel wire rods has nothing to do with the chemical composition and the process technology such as heat treatment, but was related to scratch defects on the surface, the tensile stress and the hydrogen environment during the production, which led to hydrogen-induced cracking first, and eventually fracture.

Effect of the galvanization process on the fatigue life of high strength steel compression springs

Abstract In this study, a compression spring fatigue problem arising from the galvanization process was investigated. Fatigue, crack initiation and growth of galvanized and non-galvanized springs manufactured from fully pearlitic high strength steel wires were investigated. According to the results, the galvanized compression springs exhibited a low fatigue life due to hydrogen embrittlement. Hydrogen embrittlement induced crack initiations formed under the galvanizing layer and adversely affect fatigue life. It was observed that local embrittlement on the outer surface of the spring wire causes crack initiations and disperses through the pearlitic interlamellar microstructure. Compared to non-galvanized and shot-peened specimens with the same surface roughness, compression springs, galvanized compression springs exhibited a 25 % reaction force loss at 50 000 cycles.

RETRACTED: Elastic wave methods for non-destructive damage diagnosis in the axisymmetric viscoelastic cylindrical waveguide

The popular technique for damage detection in a cylindrical waveguide is the ultrasonic guided wave propagation based acoustic emission (AE) monitoring method. It comes under the dynamic non-destructive evaluation (NDE) category, primarily established on the fluctuations in AE signal features to detect the structural damage in real-time. In this paper, the numerical modeling of wave scattering by a structural discontinuity in axisymmetric high strength steel wire - viscoelastic waveguide medium for analyzing the wave interaction by inhomogeneity is presented. The hybrid standard three-dimensional finite element (3D FE) method and semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method for numerical analysis of guided ultrasonic wave propagation are employed. For the simulation of waveguide media with arbitrary defect shapes, the hybrid 3D FE-SAFE method can be used. The basic idea is to express the frequency response of the cross-section at the two ends of the 3D FE part as a modal superposition calculated by the semi-analytical method. A case study on a steel wire is conducted to calculate the displacement response under a narrow-band external force excitation. The AE signal characteristics are used to understand the wave interaction of the pitting corrosion and tapered section in steel wire. The investigation of the amplitude of elastic waves passing through the discontinuity for the both undamped and damped cylindrical waveguide is proposed to understand the distribution of energy at points of reflections or refraction and the ratio between the amplitudes arriving at that point. Another contribution of the research work includes the robust algorithm for wave reflection and scattering based on the hybrid element method, which can effectively improve the calculation competence using an internal degree of freedom condensation and modal acceleration. It is suitable for models with multiple damages in the 3D FE area, and the accuracy of the results on wave-damage interactions can be achieved. The recommended method can be used to distinguish damages present in a viscoelastic cylindrical waveguide.

Bond behavior of stainless steel wire ropes embedded in engineered cementitious composites

Engineered cementitious composites (ECC) feature high post-cracking resistance and ductility. The stainless steel wire rope meshes have been successfully used to restore or increase capacity of existing structures. By combining the advantages of these two materials, an innovate jacketing of ECC reinforced with high-strength stainless steel (HSSS) wire rope meshes are expected to significantly improve structural performance while used for repair or strengthening of existing structures. To understand the bond behavior of HSSS wire ropes embedded in ECC, experimental studies were conducted by using direct pull-out specimens. Test variables consisted of nominal diameter of HSSS wire rope, embedded length and strength of ECC. The failure mechanism and bond-slip characteristics of HSSS wire ropes in ECC were investigated. Based on analyses of test results, the effects of the test variables on the bond properties of HSSS wire ropes embedded in ECC were revealed. A bond-slip model and the expressions of the model parameters were developed for charactering the bond-slip relationship between HSSS wire ropes and ECC.

Effect of cathodic protection current density on corrosion rate of high-strength steel wires for stay cable in simulated dynamic marine atmospheric rainwater

Impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP) is considered an effective method for reducing the corrosion of structures, but is seldom used in the corrosion protection of high-strength steel wires for bridge cables (e.g., stay cable) because the atmospheric environment in which the steel wires are located can barely provide electrolyte solutions for the ICCP system. However, rainwater accumulates on the cable surface and forms rivulets under rainfall conditions, and such rainwater rivulets can be used as electrolyte solutions for the ICCP system of high-strength steel wires. On this basis, this study proposed an ICCP method for high-strength steel wires in rainfall environment and investigated the effects of different protection current densities on the corrosion rate of stay cable steel wires in a simulated dynamic rainwater environment. In this work, the test time and environmental temperature were fixed at 20 d and 28 °C, and a 3% NaCl solution was employed as the simulated rainwater. Corrosion morphologies of steel wires were used to qualitatively characterize the corrosion degree. Weight loss and electrochemical measurements were used to quantitatively characterize the corrosion rate. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used to analyze the microscopic morphology of corroded steel wires and the chemical composition of corrosion products, respectively. Results showed that in comparison with unprotected steel wires, the surface of steel wires with ICCP were flatter, the number and size of corrosion pits were significantly reduced, and the corrosion rate was significantly reduced. Thus, ICCP played a protective effect throughout the test period; however, the protection efficiency was slightly different under different flow rates. The steel wires were effectively protected at any protective current density under the flow rate of 0.7 mL/min, but were not effectively protected when the protection current density reached 60 mA/m2 under the flow rates of 7 mL/min and 14 mL/min.

Fracture behaviour of high-strength cold-drawn pearlitic steel wires: The role of non-metallic inclusions

This paper analyses the role of non-metallic inclusions in the fracture behaviour of high-strength cold-drawn pearlitic steel wires. To this end, a metallographic and scanning electron microscope (SEM) analysis was performed of the microstructural defects in pearlitic steels and their evolution with the manufacturing process by cold drawing, analysing the consequences of such defects on the isotropic/anisotropic fracture behaviour of the different steels. Results show the very relevant role of non-metallic inclusions in the fracture behaviour of high-strength cold-drawn pearlitic steel wires.

A Study on the Development of Ring-Net using 2,040 MPa High Strength Steel Wire for Rockfall and Debris-Flow Barriers

In this study, research was conducted on the development of Ring-Net, a major component of the Ring-Net System for the localization of a high-level debris-flow barrier, which is fully applied with foreign technology. Ring-Net was constructed using the 2,040 MPa class high-strength steel wire with a 2.8 mm diameter,. Its performance was verified through simulation and a 3-Ring Test (ETAG 027). As a result, the 3-Ring breaking load of 7-19/2.8/300 Ring-Net was analyzed to be 79.8-329.0 kN. The 3-Ring energy dissipating capacity was 2.9-8.7 kJ, which is equivalent to the performance of the Ring-Net made of 1,770 MPa class wires with a 3.0 mm diameter. However, since it can be manufactured with a 13% weight reduction compared to the existing technology, it is believed to be advantageous for lightening the high-level Rockfall & Debris Barrier and improving its construction capability.

Non-Destructive Testing Mechanism for Pre-Stressed Steel Wire Using Acoustic Emission Monitoring.

In this paper, the guided ultrasonic wave propagation characteristics in the axisymmetric pre-stressed viscoelastic waveguide for acoustic emission (AE) monitoring, using the semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method, is studied broadly. For the numerical investigation, a single high-strength steel wire is considered. A comprehensive and in-depth study on the AE signal’s propagation characteristics is carried out based on the SAFE method. Both undamped and damped waveguides are considered for attaining SAFE solutions and presented in a detailed manner. The SAFE method for an axisymmetric cross-section in cylindrical coordinates analyzes the two main influencing factors of steel wire in a practical scenario: Material damping and initial tension. For the effect of initial stress, the calculation shows that the initial tensile stress can increase and decrease the energy velocity and attenuation factor of most modal waves above the cut-off frequency, and the effect is linear. Some longitudinal wave modes in the high-frequency region show their potential for AE monitoring as these modes have a low attenuation factor and small external surface vibration. By considering various states of initial stress in a damped waveguide, the effect of pre-stress on the dispersion characteristics is understood in a better manner. A non-destructive testing (NDT) mechanism for pre-stressed steel wire using AE monitoring is proposed for the health monitoring of structures.

Convergence study on ultrasonic guided wave propagation modes in an axisymmetric cylindrical waveguide

Guided wave propagation and its dispersion phenomenon of infinite solid elastic rods are encountered in several applications including, mechanical and civil engineering fields. In this paper, the elastic stress wave propagation in the axisymmetric circular cross-section of a high strength steel wire with cylindrical waveguide is investigated using a semi-analytical finite element (SAFE) method. The error analyses are carried out on fundamental modes, namely, flexural longitudinal and torsional modes. The theoretical framework for finite element (FE) discretization is established for the cylindrical waveguide. A three-node triangular linear element is used for solving SAFE dispersion solutions such as the wavenumber-frequency curve, phase velocity, and group velocity curves. The convergence and accuracy of the method are analyzed by comparing it with the calculation results of the transcendental Pochhammer frequency equation, and the meshing criterion is proposed. The use of higher-order (quadratic) elements are proposed for lower computational burden and effective method for solving eigenvalue problems. The effect of using 6-node triangular quadratic elements in the SAFE method for improving frequency accuracy is discussed in a detailed manner by proposing the meshing criterion. The calculation accuracy of a quadratic element semi-analytical discretization exceeds that of a linear element discretization with four times its radial circumference. The statistical histograms are demonstrated to prove the results of the proposed semi-analytical discretization method which can be used for solving cylindrical waveguides.

Corrosion of High-Strength Steel Wires under Tensile Stress.

The stress corrosion cracking is the central issue for high-strength wires under high tensile stress used in civil engineering. This paper explores the resistance of stress corrosion cracking of three typical steel wires of high-strength carbon through a laboratory test, combining the actions of tensile stress and corrosive solution. Besides, the impact of tensile stress and immersion time are also investigated. During the tests, the wires were subject to electrochemical measurements of potentiodynamic polarization and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, and the microstructure analysis was performed on the fractured cross sections. The obtained results show the following: the high-strength wire, conforming to GB/T 5224, has higher resistance to the combined actions of tensile stress and corrosive solution; tensile stress of 70% fracture strength and longer loading-immersion time make the film of corrosion products on steel surface unstable and weaken the corrosion resistance; the surface film consisted of the iron oxide film and the corrosion products film whose components are mainly iron thiocyanate and iron sulphide.

Steel-Reinforced Polymers and Steel-Reinforced Composite Mortars for Structural Applications—An Overview

Bonding of external reinforcement is currently the simplest, fastest, and most popular method of strengthening concrete and masonry structures. Glass and carbon organic fibers are the dominant materials used, but alternatives also include high-strength steel wires. The mechanical properties of such steel are comparable to those of carbon fiber. Due to their good compatibility with mortars, steel wires are particularly well suited to the revitalization of historic buildings. The manuscript provides an overview of research and experience in the use of steel-reinforced polymers (SRPs) and steel-reinforced composite mortars (SRCMs, also called steel-reinforced grout (SRG)) for structural strengthening. The examples described are for concrete beams, slabs and columns, walls, and masonry arches. The results of laboratory tests are discussed. The summary presents the advantages and disadvantages of composites based on ultra-high-strength steels compared with more popular carbon fiber composites.

Xiakou Xiangxi River Bridge structure design

Xiakou Xiangxi River Bridge is located in the upstream of the Three Gorges reservoir area. It is a (90+238) m single tower, Leaning Tower central cable surface mixed beam cable-stayed bridge. Its main span adopts a cross the river to meet navigation and flood control needs. The main concrete beam and the steel box girder of the main span are of large-angle inclined web box section with cantilever flange. The steel and mixed surface is at 11.05m across the bridge tower. The full width of the bridge deck is 25.5m. This bridge adopts the oblique “pipa” shaped main tower, the height of the main tower is 126m, composed of the upper tower column, the lower tower column, diaphragm and so on. The tower body deviates from the vertical surface of the bridge by 10° and leans towards the bank side. The foundation of the main tower is an integral pile foundation of the pile bearing platform. 2×17×2 high-strength parallel steel wire stay cables are used to arrange the fan-shaped space cable surface.

The corrosion-fatigue measurement test of the Zn-Al alloy coated steel wire

In this paper, the S-N curve of Zn-Al alloy coated steel wire was obtained by setting 30 groups with different corrosion-fatigue tests. The results show that the corrosion-fatigue resistance of Zn-Al alloy coated steel wire is preferable to high-strength steel wire. The crack initiation time of Zn-Al alloy coated steel wire is longer than high-strength steel wire, and the propagation speed is far lower than high-strength steel wire. Finally, a life prediction model considering corrosion-fatigue coupling effect is proposed. The calculation results show that the model considering corrosion-fatigue coupling effect can reflect the corrosion-fatigue coupling effect to some extent. The correctness of the theory is checked by comparing the calculation results with the experimental results.