Author(s)

Kenichi Masuda¹, Sotomi Ishihara^1,2, Minoru Ishiguro², Hiroshi Shibata²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan.
²National Institute of Technology, Toyama College, Toyama, Japan.

In this study, fatigue tests under different R ratios were conducted on the AZ61 Mg alloy to investigate its fatigue lifetimes and fatigue crack growth (FCG) behavior. The fracture surface of the failed specimens was investigated using a scanning electron microscope to study the size of the intermetallic compounds from which the pioneer fatigue crack initiated and led to the final failure of the specimen. To determine the maximum size of the intermetallic compounds existing within the cross section of the specimen at higher risk, Gumbel’s extreme-value statistics were utilized. In the present study, the intermetallic compounds contained within the specimen were assumed to be the initial cracks existing in the material before the fatigue tests. A modified linear elastic fracture-mechanics parameter, M, proposed by McEvily et al., was used to analyze the short FCG behavior under different stress ratios, R. The relation between the rate of FCG and M parameter was found to be useful and appropriate for predicting the fatigue lifetimes under different R ratios. Moreover, the probabilistic stress-fatigue life (P-S-N) curve of the material under different R ratios could be predicted with this method, which utilizes both the FCG law and a statistical distribution of sizes of the most dangerous intermetallic compounds. The evaluated results were in good agreement with the experimental ones. This correspondence indicates that the estimation method proposed in the present study is effective for evaluation of the probabilistic stress-fatigue life (P-S-N) curve of the material under different R ratios.

Fatigue, Stress-Fatigue Life (S-N) Curve, Probabilistic Stress-Fatigue Life (P-S-N) Curve, Crack Growth, Extruded Magnesium Alloy, Intermetallic Compound, Extreme-Value Statistics

Masuda, K. , Ishihara, S. , Ishiguro, M. and Shibata, H. (2018) Study on Fatigue Lifetimes and Their Variation of Mg Alloy AZ61 at Various Stress Ratios. Materials Sciences and Applications, 9, 993-1007. doi: 10.4236/msa.2018.913072.