Effect of carburizing treatment on the fish eye crack growth for a low alloyed chromium steel in very high cycle fatigue

A low alloyed chromium steel with a carburizing treatment is studied in VHCF regime with the help of an ultrasonic fatigue machine working at 20 kHz frequency. An infrared camera is applied to study the thermal dissipation during the crack growth period. The number of cycles at the second crack growth stage could be determined by the temperature evolution. The crack propagation model is coupled with thermal dissipation, which permits to estimate the temperature evolution in crack propagation period on specimen surface with the help of the numerical method FEM. The comparison between the results of test and simulation shows that the model is in agreement with the test in the second period of crack propagation. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.