Numerical Fatigue Analysis of Induction-Hardened and Mechanically Post-Treated Steel Components

Abstract

This paper presents a numerical simulation chain covering induction hardening (IH), superimposed stroke peening (StrP) as mechanical post-treatment, and a final fatigue assessment considering local material properties. Focusing on a notched round specimen as representative for engineering components, firstly, the electro-magnetic-thermal simulation of the inductive heating is performed with the software Comsol®. Secondly, the thermo-metallurgical-mechanical analysis of the hardening process is conducted by means of a user-defined interface, utilizing the software Sysweld®. Thirdly, mechanical post-treatment is numerically simulated by Abaqus®. Finally, a strain-based approach considering the evaluated local material properties is applied, which reveals sound accordance to the fatigue tests results, exhibiting a minor conservative deviation of only up to two per cent, which validates the applicability of the presented numerical fatigue approach.