Fatigue of Austenitic High Interstitial Steels - The Role of N and C

Abstract

In order to increase the strength and maintain the ductility of austenitic steels high Nitrogen austenitic steels (AHNS) emerged of which Ni was substituted by Mn so that up to 1 w% N could be alloyed and kept in solid solution. Cold working was added to gain strength values up to 3000 MPa. Still the endurance limit did not follow this trend. The low stacking fault energy was thought being the main reason for the solely planar slip but it became clear that other near-field effects might govern this behaviour as well. Thus the density of free electrons could be identified as being one for CrMn-steels being mainly influenced by the sum and the ratio of C and N. In order to investigate this strain-controlled fatigue tests are carried out. This contribution presents the results of strain-controlled fatigue tests and discusses them on the basis of SEM-EBSD and TEM investigations in relation to the microstructural characteristics.