Fatigue crack initiation and growth in 316L steel in torsional cyclic loading

Fatigue crack initiation and growth study in 316L austenitic stainless steel was made in cyclic\ntorsion. The experiments on hollow cylindrical specimens were performed at room temperature using fully reversed shear strain controlled cycles. The specimens used were polished mechanically and electrolytically to enable surface damage and crack propagation observation using optical light microscope, SEM. It was found that high density of extrusions and intrusions are formed on the specimen surface due to cyclic loading. TEM observations revealed that dislocation arrangement in well-known ladder-like structure is responsible for the localization of cyclic plastic deformation and for the origin of surface roughness in which the fatigue crack nucleate. The path of fatigue cracks leading to failure was observed, too. The crack path\nwas found to be dependent upon the applied shear strain amplitude