November 2000

Materials Letters 46 2000. 185188 www.elsevier.comrlocatermatlet

On the fatigue crack growth behaviour of two ferritepearlite microalloyed steels

V. Subramanya Sarma a,) , K.A. Padmanabhan a , G. Jaeger b, A. Koethe b, M. Schaper c
b

Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur 208 016 India Institut f ur Festkorper- und Werkstofforschung (IFW), Dresden, Germany c Technische Uniersitat, Dresden, Germany Received 24 March 2000; accepted 19 May 2000

Abstract Fatigue crack growth rates FCGR. in the Paris regime of two ferritepearlite microalloyed MA. steels are shown to be in good agreement with those predicted using a model of crack tip element failure by low cycle fatigue LCF.. Fatigue striations of correct spacing 0.10.2 mm. dimensions were seen in the fractured specimens of both the steels. q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Microalloyed steels; Fatigue crack growth; Paris region; Low cycle fatigue

Fatigue crack growth FCG. in metallic materials has been studied extensively, for a review, see Ref. w1x. The fatigue crack growth rate FCGR., d ard N ., is usually plotted against the stress intensity range, D K ., a loglog plot.. Of the three regions, regions I near threshold. and II steady state Paris. regime. are of special interest. Control processed, ferritepearlite microalloyed MA. steels are replacing quenched and tempered Q and T. steels in many applications w2x. The present study is part of a detailed investigation on two such MA steels w36x, a pearlite-dominant medium carbon 49MnVS3. and another ferrite-dominant low carbon E-38. grade. 49MnVS3 was received as 17-mm thick slabs and E-38 in the form of 7-mm thick plates. The chemical compositions are given in Table

1. Cyclic stress-strain CSS. and fatigue properties, as well as the microstructural parameters, are presented in Table 2. The FCG tests were carried out with a computer-controlled dynamic compliance DYNACOMP. equipment w7,8x, in which the specimen represents the decisive compliance of a mechanical resonator Fig. 1.. Exciting the resonator at its resonance frequency enables the determination of the effective crack length by high-resolution period mea-

Table 1 Chemical compositions wt.%. of the MA steels Material C 49Mn VS3 E-38 Si Mn P S V Nb N Fe

0.49 0.27 0.98 0.02 0.05 0.09

0.016 Balance

0.09 0.03 0.81 0.02 0.03 0.007 0.015 0.007 Balance

Corresponding author.

00167-577Xr00r$ - see front matter q 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 1 6 7 - 5 7 7 X 0 0 . 0 0 1 6 5 - 8

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V. Subramanya Sarma et al.r Materials Letters 46 (2000) 185188

Table 2 Mechanical properties and microstructural details Material 49MnVS3 E-38

sys MPa.
530 371

scysMPa.
510 318

d mm. 16 " 2.2 9"1

l mm.
0.25 " 0.03 ND

c y0.64 y0.82 y0.6

X f

0.14 0.078 0.23

0.6 3.35 0.3

ND Not determined. sys , 0.2% monotonic yield strength; scys , 0.2% cyclic yield strength; d, pearlite colony sizergrain size; l, interlamellar spacing; nX , cyclic X strain hardening exponent; c, CoffinManson exponent; f CoffinManson coefficient.

surements. Resonance vibrations at high amplitudes serve to load the specimen and monitor the crack length. All measurements were carried out on single edge notched SEN. specimens of cross-section 6.5 = 20 mm2 , which were notched for 4 mm by spark

erosion notch root radius 0.12 mm.. Crack propagation was perpendicular to the slab forging direction in 49MnVS3 but was along the plate rolling direction in E-38. The FCG tests were carried out using the D K, increasing the constant load. procedure at a load ratio minimum loadrmaximum load., R, of 0.25.

Fig. 1. A schematic of the DYNACOMP machine.

Fig. 2. d ard N vs. D K plots for MA steels 49MnVS3 and E-38.

Fig. 3. Computed and experimental FCGR plots for a. 49MnVS3, and b. E-38.

V. Subramanya Sarma et al.r Materials Letters 46 (2000) 185188

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Fig. 4. Striations in a. 49MnVS3, and b. E-38.

Despite the vastly different microstructures, the two steels exhibited a similar FCG response Fig. 2.. It is well known that FCG in the Paris region is not influenced by the microstructure. The lack of influence is generally attributed to the cyclic plastic zone size being larger than the characteristic microstructural unit size continuum behaviour.. Using the approach of crack tip element failure by LCF, it has been shown that w9x sj 2 s. 1. dN E where j s Esr4scys fX d .. is a dimensionless parameter, E is the Youngs modulus, scys is the cyclic yield stress, fX is the cyclic ductility coefficient, d is the dislocation barrier spacing grain size or interlamellar spacing., c is the cyclic ductility exponent and s is the striation spacing. It is reasoned that the lack of influence of microstructure is due to the increase in the cyclic yield strength scys and the fatigue ductility exponent c being compensated for by a corresponding decrease in the dislocation barrier spacing d, as this leads to a very narrow range for the j values and the crack growth rates w9x. From Eq. 1. and the Paris relation d ard N s CD K m ., ms 2rc and the Paris coefficient, C, is a function of j . Tomkins w10x has shown that at low stresses, c s 1r2 nX q 1.. Therefore, m s 2 2 nX q 1 . 2. The calculated and the experimental crack growth plots are shown in Fig. 3a and b, respectively. For 49MnVS3, the dislocation barrier spacing, d, was da
1r c 1y1rc .

DK

2rc

taken as 2 1r2 t q l., where t is the thickness of the cementite plate and l, the interlamellar spacing, was taken as 0.5 mm the factor 2 1r2 is due to cementite deforming at approximately 458 to the loading axis w4,11x.. For E-38, the dislocation barrier spacing was taken to be equal to the average grain size 9 mm.. The striation spacing s was taken as 0.1 mm for 49MnVS3 and 0.2 mm for E-38. For 49MnVS3, c at low strain amplitude was obtained experimentally Table 2.. Due to experimental limitations, LCF data for E-38 could not be generated at low strain amplitudes. And so, Eq. 2. was used for calculating m. In both the steels, a very good correlation between the calculated and the experimental growth rates Fig. 3. was obtained. Fractography revealed evidence for striated crack growth in both the steels Fig. 4.. The striation spacings were indeed of the order 0.10.2 mm. Acknowledgements The authors thank the Volkswagen Stiftung for financial assistance. Drs. J.J. Irani and O.N. Mohanty of Tata Iron and Steel, Jamshedpur, India, supplied the microalloyed steels. References
w1x D.L. Davidson, J. Lankford, Int. Mater. Rev. 32 1992. 45. w2x M. Korchynsky, in: M. Korchynsky, .A.J. De Ardo Eds.., Proc. of Int. Conf. Microalloying 95, Iron and Steel Society, Pittsburgh, USA, 1995, p. 3.

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V. Subramanya Sarma et al.r Materials Letters 46 (2000) 185188 Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1998, p. 697. F. Schlat, Int. J. Fract. 19 1982. R37. M. Schaper, A. Boehm, in: K.H. Schwalbe, C. Berger Eds.., Eur. Conf. Fract. ECF 10., Berlin, vol. II, Verlag EMAS, 1994, p. 1451. K.S. Chan, Metall. Trans. A 24 1993. 2473. B. Tomkins, Philos. Mag. 18 1968. 1041. L.E. Miller, G.C. Smith, 208 JISI 1970. 998.

w3x V. Subramanya Sarma, K.A. Padmanabhan, Int. J. Fatigue 17 1997. 135. w4x V. Subramanya Sarma, K.A. Padmanabhan, Siddhartha Das, J. Mater. Sci. Lett. 16 1997. 1495. w5x V. Subramanya Sarma, K.A. Padmanabhan, A. Gueth, A. Koethe, Mater. Sci. Technol. 15 1999. 260. w6x V. Subramanya Sarma, K.A. Padmanabhan, G. Jaeger, A. Koethe, in: K.T. Rie, P.D. Portella Eds.., Proc. Low Cycle Fatigue Elasto-Plast. Behav. Mater., wInt. Conf.x, 4th,

w7x w8x

w9x w10x w11x