Influence of surface morphology on the very high cycle fatigue behavior of metastable and stable austenitic Cr-Ni steels

The present study investigates conventional and cryogenically turned specimens of metastable austenitic steel AISI 347 and stable austenitic steel AISI 904L in the VHCF regime. The cryogenic turning process includes cooling by CO2 snow and generates a surface layer on the specimens of metastable austenitic steel, which is characterized by a phase transformation from paramagnetic fcc - austenite to ferromagnetic bcc - martensite and grain refinement. The stable austenitic steel retains its purely austenitic structure after cryogenic turning, but also shows grain refinement in the surface layer. The specimens with different surface morphology were cyclically loaded at ambient temperature using an ultrasonic fatigue testing system developed and built at the authors’ institute. The testing machine operates at frequencies of approx. 20 kHz to achieve high numbers of load cycles within a reasonable time. To avoid self heating of the specimen, the tests were performed in pulse-pause mode. All specimens were tested with a load ratio of R = -1. During cyclic loading, the metastable austenitic steel partially transformed from paramagnetic fcc - austenite to ferromagnetic bcc - martensite, while no phase transformation could be detected in the stable austenitic steel