Institute of Metals Division - Comparison of Fatigue Mechanisms in Bcc Iron and Fcc Metals

A study is made of the microstructural changes produced in armco and pure iron subjected to alternating torsion at amplitudes above and below the knee of the S/N curve. The aim was to identify the basic mechanisms of fatigue and to find why they should give rise to a sharp S/N knee in contrast to the type of S/N curve shown by fcc metals. It is found that the basic structural change above the knee in the iron is a pronounced cell formation in the grains, which determines irregular micro-cracks, and below the knee a dispersion of fine slip that determines a dispersed pore formation in the grains. Comparison of these changes with those in fcc metals similarly tested shows that they do not include an intermediate structural change, a concentrating of slip in narrow bands with associated slip-band cracking, that characterizes the fcc metals and accounts for their different type of S/N curve. RECENT conferences on basic mechanisms of fatigue emphasize that fatigue damage takes many forms: for example, cracking in slip bands (Thompson1), at grain boundaries and inclusions (Hempel'), at precipitation zones in alloys (Han-stock, Forsythe), or at surface notch-peak effects, both hypothetical (Mott, cottrel16) and observed (Wood). Evidently it is not easy to see in this diversity a basic mechanism. At the same time the contributions suggest that some reconciliation may be possible if distinctions are drawn between three phases of the fatigue process: initiation of damage at nuclei, distribution of these nuclei, and the final macroscopic crack system. In initiation, the relevant features appear to be that nuclei may appear early, at least by 1/100th to 1/1000th of the life of a test specimen; that they may do so at many independent centers, appearing according to some observationsa as pores or voids; and that they are not necessarily self-propagating, damage spreading rather by their multiplication. In distribution, the relevant feature appears to be that they form preferentially in zones where the microstructure becomes abnormally strained (as defined more closely below). Now in these two phases the basic fatigue process should be systematic. But, at the same time, the "abnormal strains" in particular set the stage for considerable diversity in the final phase of macroscopic cracking, for where zones of abnormal strain develop will depend on what kind of fatigue deformation is applied and what kind of prior processing the test material has had. On this view it seems desirable to know what in