Fatigue Behavior of Metastable Austenitic Stainless Steels in LCF, HCF and VHCF Regimes at Ambient and Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

Corrosion resistance has been the main scope of the development in high-alloyed low carbon austenitic stainless steels. However, the chemical composition influences not only the passivity but also significantly affects their metastability and, consequently, the transformation as well as the cyclic deformation behavior. In technical applications, the austenitic stainless steels undergo fatigue in low cycle fatigue (LCF), high cycle fatigue (HCF), and very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regime at room and elevated temperatures. In this context, the paper focuses on fatigue and transformation behavior at ambient temperature and 300 °C of two batches of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 347 in the whole fatigue regime from LCF to VHCF. Fatigue tests were performed on two types of testing machines: (i) servohydraulic and (ii) ultrasonic with frequencies: at (i) 0.01 Hz (LCF), 5 and 20 Hz (HCF) and 980 Hz (VHCF); and at (ii) with 20 kHz (VHCF). The results show the significant influence of chemical composition and temperature of deformation induced ´-martensite formation and cyclic deformation behavior. Furthermore, a “true” fatigue limit of investigated metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 347 was identified including the VHCF regime at ambient temperature and elevated temperatures.