Fatigue analysis of high-carbon steel at different environmental temperatures considering the blue brittleness effect

Fully-reversed bending fatigue and impulse excitation tests are performed to investigate the behavior of High Carbon Steel (HCS) during cyclic loading at different environmental temperatures. The evolution of the damping, elastic modulus, and frequency for different operating temperatures ranging from 23C to 135C is characterized. The results of the damping are related to the rate of damage accumulation and crack growth-both of which are shown to increase with increasing the environmental temperature. It is shown that specimens tend to become more brittle with increasing of environmental temperature due to the so-called blue brittleness effect, and consequently the fatigue life of the specimens decreases. To gain further insight, a finite element model (FEM) is developed to assess the maximum principal stress distribution. The results corroborate the experimental findings.

Automated summary

In this study, fully-reversed bending fatigue and impulse excitation tests were conducted to investigate the behavior of High Carbon Steel (HCS) at different environmental temperatures. It was found that with increasing environmental temperature, the specimens tended to become more brittle, leading to a decrease in fatigue life.