Investigation of Effect of Pre-Strain on Very High-Cycle Fatigue Strength of Austenitic Stainless Steels

This paper describes the effect of large pre-strain on very high cycle fatigue strength of austenitic stainless steels that are widely used in nuclear power plants. Fatigue tests were carried out on strain-hardened specimens. The material served in this study was type SUS316NG. Up to ±20% pre-strain was introduced to the materials, and the materials were mechanically machined into hourglass shaped smooth specimens. Some specimens were pre-strained after machining. Experiments were conducted in ultrasonic and rotating-bending fatigue testing machines. The S-N curves obtained in this study show that an increase in the magnitude of the pre-strain increases the fatigue strength of the material and this relationship is independent of the type of the pre-strain of tension or compression. Although all specimens fractured by the surface initiated fatigue cracks, one specimen fractured by an internal origin. However, this internal fracture did not cause a sudden drop in fatigue strength of type SUS316NG. Vickers hardness tests were carried out to ascertain the relationship between fatigue strength and hardness of the pre-strained materials. It was found that the increase in the fatigue limit of the pre-strained materials strongly depended on the hardness derived from an indentation size equal to the scale of stage I fatigue cracks.