Study on Short Fatigue Crack Behaviour of LZ50 Steel Under Non-Proportional Loading

The low cycle fatigue tests using the replica technique for LZ50 steel under non-proportional cyclic loading were carried out, and eight groups of effective test data were obtained. The evolution behaviour of short cracks was studied based on the effective short cracks criterion. The results show that short cracks generally originate in the grain or along the grain boundary. At the microstructural short crack stage, the crack propagation is influenced strongly by the microstructure of the material, and the growth rate of the short crack slows down several times according to the number of obstacles encountered. At the physical short crack stage, the crack propagation breaks through the banded structure of pearlite. Thus, the dominant effective short fatigue crack is formed, and the crack growth rate increases rapidly. Based on the modified parameters of the uniaxial short crack model, an approach is presented to calculate the growth rate of short cracks under multi-axial non-proportional loadings, and the new model can consider the non-proportional factor F. The fitting results of the multi-axial microstructural obstacles model are compared with test data. The comparison results show that this model can reflect the trend of short fatigue crack propagation rate under non-proportional loadings.

Effects of Rare Earth on Mechanical Properties of LZ50 Axle Steels and Its Formation Mechanism

To study the mechanism of rare earth (RE) elements on the mechanical properties of axle steels, trace RE were added to LZ50 axle steel, which was melted in vacuum induction furnace. By calculating the thermodynamic and kinetic of RE inclusions, the formation mechanism of inclusions was discussed. And the effects of RE elements on the microstructures and mechanical properties were investigated. The results show that RE and O elements in the molten steels diffused into the interface and increased the thickness of the liquid film. The inclusions transform into 1–3 μm spherical RE compound inclusions instead of 5 μm Al2O3-SiO2 with sharp edges. The grain sizes of the steels containing 0.0010 %～0.0026 % RE were decreased, impact toughness and fatigue resistance were improved greatly, compared with the steel without RE. The impact toughness and fatigue resistance of the LZ50 steel with the addition of 0.0010 % RE were increased by 1.65 and 2 times, respectively.