Very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) is generally considered as the domain of fatigue lifetime beyond 10 million (107) load cycles. Few examples of structural components which are subjected to 107-109 load cycles during their service life are engine parts, turbine disks, railway axles and load-carrying parts of automobiles. Therefore, the safe and reliable operation of these components depends on the knowledge of their fatigue strength and the prevalent damage/failure mechanisms. Moreover, the fatigue life of materials in the VHCF regime is controlled by the fatigue crack initiation and early growth stage of short cracks. This study was focussed on the evaluation of fatigue properties of duplex stainless steels in the VHCF regime using the ultrasonic fatigue testing equipment. The ultrasonic fatigue tests were conducted on the cold rolled duplex stainless strip steel and hot rolled duplex stainless steel grades. Two different geometries of ultrasonic fatigue test specimens were tested. Considerable attention was devoted to the evaluation of fatigue crack initiation and growth mechanisms using the high resolution scanning electron microscopy. The fatigue crack initiation was found to be surface initiated phenomena in all the tested grades, albeit different in each case. The second part of this thesis work was the development of a distributed dislocation dipole technique for the analysis of multiple straight, kinked and branched cracks in an elastic half plane. Cracks with dimensions much smaller than the overall size of the domain were considered. The main goal of the development of this technique was the evaluation of stress intensity factor at each crack tip. The comparison of results from the stress intensity factor evaluation by the developed procedure and the well-established Finite Element Method software ABAQUS showed difference of less than 1% for Jacobi polynomial expansion of sixth order in the dipole density representation. / <p>Article III was still in manuscript form at the time of the defense.</p> / Very high cycle fatigue of stainless steels

Mechanical fatigue is a failure phenomenon that occurs due to repeated application of mechanical loads. Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) is considered as the domain of fatigue life greater than 10 million load cycles. Increasing numbers of structural components have service life in the VHCF regime, for instance in automotive and high speed train transportation, gas turbine disks, and components of paper production machinery. Safe and reliable operation of these components depends on the knowledge of their VHCF properties. In this thesis both experimental tools and theoretical modelling were utilized to develop better understanding of the VHCF phenomena. In the experimental part, ultrasonic fatigue testing at 20 kHz of cold rolled and hot rolled stainless steel grades was conducted and fatigue strengths in the VHCF regime were obtained. The mechanisms for fatigue crack initiation and short crack growth were investigated using electron microscopes. For the cold rolled stainless steels crack initiation and early growth occurred through the formation of the Fine Granular Area (FGA) observed on the fracture surface and in TEM observations of cross-sections. The crack growth in the FGA seems to control more than 90% of the total fatigue life. For the hot rolled duplex stainless steels fatigue crack initiation occurred due to accumulation of plastic fatigue damage at the external surface, and early crack growth proceeded through a crystallographic growth mechanism. Theoretical modelling of complex cracks involving kinks and branches in an elastic half-plane under static loading was carried out by using the Distributed Dislocation Dipole Technique (DDDT). The technique was implemented for 2D crack problems. Both fully open and partially closed crack cases were analyzed. The main aim of the development of the DDDT was to compute the stress intensity factors. Accuracy of 2% in the computations was attainable compared to the solutions obtained by the Finite Element Method. / Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) is considered as the domain of fatigue life greater than 10 million load cycles. Structural components that have service life in the VHCF regime include wheels and axles of high speed trains, gas turbine disks, and components of paper production machinery. Safe and reliable design, and the longevity, of these components depends on the knowledge of their VHCF properties. The overall aim of the experimental portion of this thesis was to gain in-depth knowledge of the VHCF properties of stainless steels. Fatigue test data in the VHCF regime was generated for different stainless steel grades using ultrasonic fatigue testing. The mechanisms for fatigue crack initiation and short crack growth were investigated using electron microscopes. Theoretical modelling of complex crack geometries involving kinks and branches was carried out by using the Distributed Dislocation Dipole Technique (DDDT). The main aim of this development was to compute the stress intensity factors and to analyse the stress state around the cracks. The results showed that accuracy of 2% was attainable compared to the solutions obtained by Finite Element Method (FEM). / <p>Artikel 4 publicerad i avhandlingen som manuskript</p>

Ce travail vise à améliorer notre compréhension du comportement en fatigue à grand et très grand nombre de cycles d’un acier ferrito-martensitique dual phase, notamment les effets de la température et de la vitesse de déformation résultant de chargements cycliques à haute fréquence. L'effet de la fréquence sur la réponse en fatigue de l'acier DP600 a été étudié en effectuant des essais de fatigue sur une machine ultrasonique travaillant à 20 kHz et sur une machine conventionnelle travaillant à des fréquences inférieures à 100 Hz. Des études de fractographie et des observations microscopiques à la surface des échantillons ont été effectuées pour étudier les mécanismes de déformation et de rupture. De plus, la thermographie infrarouge in situ a été utilisée pour étudier la réponse thermique et les mécanismes dissipatifs du matériau lors des essais de fatigue. Les courbes S-N ont été déterminées à partir de chargements de fatigue ultrasoniques à 20 kHz et d’essais conventionnels à 30 Hz. La durée de vie pour une amplitude de contrainte donnée est plus élevée dans le cas de la fatigue ultrasonique bien que la limite de fatigue soit identique dans les deux cas. L’augmentation inévitable de la température en fatigue ultrasonique à fortes amplitudes de contraintes, ainsi que le comportement dépendant de la vitesse de déformation de la ferrite, en tant que structure CC, ont été trouvés comme les paramètres clés expliquant le comportement observé en fatigue, et la réponse thermique sous les fréquences faibles et ultrasoniques. Les écarts observés entre l’essai de fatigue conventionnel et celui ultrasonique ont été évalués à travers les mécanismes de mobilité des dislocations vis dans la phase ferritique de structure cubique centrée (CC). La durée de vie plus élevée et l’amorçage de la fissure principale sur une inclusion observés en fatigue ultrasonique ont été attribués au vieillissement dynamique résultant du fort auto-échauffement du matériau aux fortes amplitudes de contraintes. L'existence d'une transition du régime thermiquement activé au régime athermique avec l’augmentation de l'amplitude de contrainte a été mise en évidence. Au-dessous de la limite de fatigue, la déformation a lieu dans un régime thermiquement activé alors qu'elle est dans un régime athermique au-dessus de la limite de fatigue. En fatigue conventionnelle, la déformation est athermique pour toutes les amplitudes de contrainte. Une carte de transition a été produite en utilisant les résultats expérimentaux pour l'acier DP600 ainsi que les données disponibles dans la littérature pour d'autres aciers à base de ferrite, montrant ainsi la corrélation entre le mouvement des dislocations vis thermiquement activé et l'absence de rupture en fatigue à très grand nombre de cycle. / This work is an attempt towards a better understanding of the high cycle and very high cycle fatigue behaviors of a ferritic-martensitic dual-phase steel, with a regard to temperature and strain rate effects, resulting from accelerated fatigue loading frequencies. The influence of frequency on fatigue response of DP600 steel was investigated by conducting ultrasonic and conventional low frequency fatigue tests. Fractography studies and microscopic observations on the surface of specimens were carried out to study the deformation and fracture mechanisms under low and ultrasonic frequencies. Moreover, in situ infrared thermography was carried out to investigate the thermal response and dissipative mechanisms of the material under fatigue tests. The S-N curves were determined from ultrasonic 20-kHz fatigue loadings and conventional tests at 30 Hz. Fatigue life for a given stress amplitude was found to be higher in the case of ultrasonic fatigue whereas the fatigue limit was the same for both cases. Moreover, crack initiation was always inclusion-induced under ultrasonic loading while under conventional tests it occurred at slip bands or defects on the surface. The inevitable temperature increase under ultrasonic fatigue at high stress amplitudes along with the rate dependent deformation behavior of ferrite, as a body centered cubic (BCC) structure, were found as the key parameters explaining the observed fatigue behavior and thermal response under low and ultrasonic frequencies. The discrepancies observed between conventional and ultrasonic fatigue tests were assessed through the mechanisms of screw dislocation mobility in the ferrite phase as a BCC structure. The higher fatigue life and inclusion-induced crack initiations in the case of ultrasonic loading were attributed to the dynamic strain aging, which resulted from the high temperature increases at high stress amplitudes. The existence of a transition in deformation regime from thermally-activated to athermal regime under ultrasonic fatigue loading by increasing the stress amplitude was confirmed. Below the fatigue limit, deformation occurred in thermally-activated regime while it was in athermal regime above the fatigue limit. Under conventional loading deformation occurred in athermal regime for all stress amplitudes. From the analysis of the experimental data gathered in this work, guidelines were given regarding the comparison and interpretation of S-N curves obtained from conventional and ultrasonic fatigue testing. A transition map was produced using the experimental results for DP600 steel as well as data available in the literature for other ferrite based steels, showing the correlation between thermally-activated screw dislocation movement and the absence of failure in very high cycle fatigue.

The diploma thesis deals with the evaluation of the lifetimes of smooth and notched specimens. The comparison of their lifetimes is focused on the case of high-frequency cyclic loading in the area of high-cycle and gigacycle fatigue of materials. The theory of critical distances is used to evaluate and recalculate the life curves of the notched specimens. The effect of the notch is quantified using the Line method. The critical length parameter is determined so that the life curve of the notched specimens corresponds to the curve measured on smooth specimens. The result is the dependence of the critical length parameter on the number of cycles to fracture. Knowledge of critical length parameters can be used to determine the lifetime of notched specimens as well as real notched components using the results of fatigue tests of smooth specimens.

This work were requested by Uddeholms AB. Uddeholm is the worldś leading manufacturer of high performance tool steel for industrial tools. The company exists worldwide and is present in over 100 countries. One of the company’s main production processes is manufacturing powder steels with extremely high quality. In this work, one of these steels has been analyzed to evaluate the presence and distribution of non-metallic inclusions. Higher demands on quality and more global competition worldwide means that you always have to strive towards perfection in the manufacturing processes. Non-metallic inclusions have severe effects on the mechanical properties of steels. That's why it's of utmost importance to investigate their presence in the tool steel and especially their size. The reason for this is because it's the largest inclusions that's the most dangerous for the material. To obtain a statistically number of certainty of the largest of inclusions, very vast areas of steel have to be examined. Therefore a theoretical method of extrapolation is often used instead to approximate the distribution of the largest inclusions. The precision of this method is still very uncertain. Different methods of this kind of analysis do exist. The method applied in this work of degree is extreme values analysis by statistics of extreme values (SEV). To ensure the pre-conditions of the extreme values analysis, a large quantity of powder steel was analyzed. This was done by light-optic microscopy (LOM) and exclusively performed by Uddeholms AB at their R&amp;D-facility (Research and development-facility) in Hagfors. At Karlstad Universityś test-facility specimens were subjected to ultrasonic fatigue testing at 20 kHz. The specimens derived from the same material as the ones examined in LOM. The result from the ultrasonic fatigue testing were that the largest inclusions in the material were found. This was done by applying very high cycle fatigue (VHCF). To calculate the maximum theoretical inclusion size, SEV was used. The extreme values analysis was performed on gathered data from both LOM and VHCF. All fracture surfaces from the ultrasonic fatigue testing were then examined in scanning electron microscope (SEM) at Karlstad University. In SEM, the largest inclusion in every fractured surface was identified and measured. The maximum real inclusion size from the fractured surfaces was then compared to the maximum theoretically calculated inclusion size from the extreme values analysis. As it turned out the real inclusion size proved to be slightly larger than the theoretical. The difference between them was found to be 3,25 µm. Conclusions drawn were that Uddeholms powder steel exhibits very high purity and that extreme values analysis as an analytical method is recommended. However, the analysis should be repeated to underline the chosen solution methodology.