Effect of Size and Distribution of Inclusions on High-cycle Fatigue Properties of a 2 GPa-graded Ultra-high-strength Medium-Mn Steel

doi:10.11901/1005.3093.2025.041

Chinese Journal of Materials Research

2025, Vol. 39

Issue (12): 892-900 DOI: 10.11901/1005.3093.2025.041

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Effect of Size and Distribution of Inclusions on High-cycle Fatigue Properties of a 2 GPa-graded Ultra-high-strength Medium-Mn Steel

LI Changpeng¹, PANG Jianchao², WANG Zilong¹, LI Yunjie¹(

), LI Linlin¹(

)

^1.State Key Laboratory of Digital Steel, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110819, China
^2.Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang 110016, China

Cite this article:

LI Changpeng, PANG Jianchao, WANG Zilong, LI Yunjie, LI Linlin. Effect of Size and Distribution of Inclusions on High-cycle Fatigue Properties of a 2 GPa-graded Ultra-high-strength Medium-Mn Steel. Chinese Journal of Materials Research, 2025, 39(12): 892-900.

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Abstract

Inclusions can be easily introduced into steels during smelting, and they have an important impact on the fatigue cracking behavior and fatigue strength of the steels. As the strength of the steel increases, its sensitivity to microstructural defects also increases, yet the fatigue strength does not necessarily increase monotonically. Here, the high-cycle fatigue properties of a newly-developed ultra-high-strength medium-Mn steel with tensile strength higher than 2 GPa were investigated. The morphology, phase composition, distribution and size of the inclusions on the fatigue fracture were observed and analyzed by means of X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The results indicate that the high-cycle fatigue of the ultra-high-strength steel is caused by the initiation of cracks at inclusions, which exhibit three types: surface inclusions, subsurface inclusions, and internal inclusions. The fatigue life increases as the crack initiation sites changing from surface to internal inclusions. The fatigue properties of ultra-high-strength steel are extremely sensitive to the size of inclusions. The critical size of the inclusions gradually increases as the distance between the inclusions and the test specimen surface increases. Under the same stress amplitude, the fatigue life increases with the decrease of the inclusion size. Compared with other medium- and high-strength steels, the current steel has high fatigue strength and fatigue ratio, which can be attributed to its high strength and good plasticity. The gradual transformation induced plasticity effect helped to disperse local stress concentration and dissipate plastic work to retard growth of fatigue cracks. Consequently, larger critical inclusion sizes are required for crack initiation and propagation during fatigue.

Key words: metallic materials 2 GPa-graded medium-Mn steel high-cycle fatigue non-metallic inclusions fatigue strength critical inclusion size

Received: 16 January 2025

ZTFLH:

TG142.1

Fund: National Natural Science Foundation of China(52371101);Project of State Key Laboratory of Digital Steel(ZZ2021003)

Corresponding Authors: LI Linlin, Tel: 15140093270, E-mail: lill@ral.neu.edu.cn;
LI Yunjie, Tel: 15140037408, E-mail: liyunjie@ral.neu.edu.cn

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https://www.cjmr.org/EN/10.11901/1005.3093.2025.041 OR https://www.cjmr.org/EN/Y2025/V39/I12/892

Table 1 Chemical composition of experimental steel (mass fraction, %)

Fig.1 Schematic diagram of the shape and size for tensile samples (a) and high-cycle fatigue samples (b)

Fig.2 Microstructure (a) and XRD pattern (b) of experimental steel

Fig.3 Vickers hardness diagram (a) and tensile engineering stress-strain curve (b) of experimental steel

Fig.4 S-N curve (a)and fatigue strength test staircase method diagram (b) of experimental steel

Fig.5 Fatigue fracture morphology of surface inclusion-induced cracking at different propagation stages (a) macroscopic fracture morphology, (b) microstructural characteristics of crack origin and associated inclusion chemistry, (c) morphology of the crack steady-state propagation zone, (d) morphology of the crack rapid propagation zone

Fig.6 Fatigue fracture morphology of subsurface inclusion-induced cracking at different propagation stages (a) macroscopic fracture morphology, (b) microstructural characteristics of crack origin and associated inclusion chemistry, (c) morphology of the crack steady-state propagation zone, (d) morphology of the crack rapid propagation zone

Fig.7 Fatigue fracture morphology of internal inclusion-induced cracking at different propagation stages (a) macroscopic fracture morphology, (b) microstructural characteristics of crack origin and associated inclusion chemistry, (c) morphology of the crack steady-state propagation zone, (d) morphology of the crack rapid propagation zone

Fig.8 Effect of inclusion location and size on fatigue performance (a) S-N curves for inclusions at different locations, (b) statistical distribution of inclusion sizes, (c) relationship between inclusion size and fatigue life at constant stress amplitude

Fig.9 Size of the critical inclusion was measured by extrapolation

No. of samples	σ_-1 / MPa	N_f / cycles	$a r e a i n c$ / μm	Murakami formula
No. of samples	σ_-1 / MPa	N_f / cycles	$a r e a i n c$ / μm	σ_-1 / MPa	$a r e a i n c$ / μm
6	600	1 × 10⁷	37.4	523	16.4
8	660	1 × 10⁷	8.6	604	5.0
10	660	1 × 10⁷	44.9	507	9.2
11	680	1 × 10⁷	8.7	603	4.2
13	680	1 × 10⁷	14.4	554	4.1

Table 2 Murakami formula inverts fatigue strength and critical inclusion size

Fig.10 Relationship between the tensile strength and fatigue strength for the two kinds of experimental steel in this chapter and various steels reported^[8,13,27~33] (a) and XRD pattern after high-cycle fatigue (b)

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