Failure in Materials

VII. Failure of Materials

Prof.Dr. Bilgehan Ögel

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Failure in Materials

Failure

 Ductile Fracture: (Fig.1)

 The crack propagation involves high amount of energy
absorbtion
 The fracture surface is dull and microscopically dimple formation
is seen.
 Brittle Fracture: (Fig.2)
 No or very low energy absorbtion during fracture.
 The fracture surface is flat and shiny

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The half of a charpy Necking in a

impact specimen rectangular tensile
test specimen

Fig.1. Ductile Fracture

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The transmission The half of a charpy

axe of a 4x4 vehicle impact specimen

Fig.2. Brittle Fracture

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Fatigue Failures

 Fatigue failures occur in materials subjected to cyclic loading.

 Cyclic loading amplitude can be even lower than the yield strength
of the material.
 A small crack is nucleated on the tension side and propagates.
 When the crack reaches a critical size, the rest of the section
cannot carry the load and sudden fracture takes place.

 Tensile stresses are needed to propagate a crack.

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Fatigue Failures

Animation.1. Single Amplitude Loading

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Fatigue Failures

Animation.2 Cyclic Loading on a Beam

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 The load on the component during cyclic loading: Stress Amplitude.

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 The relation between the stress amplitude and fatigue life. The
higher the load (stress amplitude), the shorter the fatigue life

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 The stress amplitude on a component and its effect on fatigue life.

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 Can you see the fatigue crack propagation (leaf spring of a van
(transporter))
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 The FCC alloys like Al alloys, Cu alloys do not show an endurance

limit.

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Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

Surface Irregularities:
 The Fatigue crack can propagate more easily, if the surface is
irregular.
 The stress distribution just at the tip of the crack is high. (Fig.3)
 A scratch at the surface or a sharp corner act as stress
concentration point. So, even the nominal stress 0 may be low, the
stress max just at the tip of the crack may be very high.
 Also the crack length “a” and the crack tip radius “” effect the fatigue
life.
 The large cracks (large a) and sharper cracks (smaller ) causes a
higher max . So fatigue crack propagation become easy.

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Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

Fig.3. Notch effect

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Failure in Materials

Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

Tensile Strength:
 The Fatigue life of a component increase, with an increase in the
Ultimate Tensile Strength (Fig.7.4)
 Therefore, high strength materials give higher fatigue strength.
 This is due to that the crack initiation by plastic deformation at the
surface becomes more difficult.
 However, this relation is lost at very high strength values, because
the surface imperfections become the limiting factor. No further
increase is observed

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Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

Fig.4. The relation between UTS and Fatigue Life.

Real data shows a scatter (due to surface imperfections)
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Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

Surface Hardness:
Improves the fatigue life:
 Cold Working (Shot peening)
 Case Hardening
 Induction hardening, carburizing improves the fatigue life.

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Fig.7.6. Effect of strength on fatigue life.

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 Failure in Materials

Factors Affecting Fatigue Life

 As mentioned previously non-metallic inclusion stem from
steelmaking process.
 Steels having lower content of non-metallic inclusions are named as
clean steels.
 Clean steels have better fatigue life (Figure.7.6b)

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Creep

 Tendency of a material to deform slowly under stress and high

temperature
 Deformation is permanent
 For materials, creep is observed at temperatures above 0,5Tm
(Melting Temperature).
 The stages of creep can be divided into (Fig.4)
1. Primary Creep
2. Secondary Creep
3. Tertiary Creep

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Creep

Fig.7.7. Stages of a creep failure

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The Mechanism of Creep

 Creep starts with dislocation motion in elastic region

 Grains slip on each other and form POROSITY at three-point
juctions (Fig.7.8)
 These porosities weaken the material and rupture takes place
 Creep is one of the events, where COARSE GRAINS are wanted

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Creep

Fig.7.8. The grain boundary slip at high temperatures and formation of

porosity.
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Design for Creep Resistant Materials

 Generally Ni based alloys are used.

 Coarse grained materials.
 Microalloying to form grain boundary precipitates, which delay the
grain boundary sliding.
 Powder metallurgy products, with Al2O3 or Y2O5 oxide particle
additions.
 For very critical parts single crystal superalloys

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Ductile to Brittle Transition Temperature

 A sudden ductility loss is observed below a definite temperature.

 This temperature is named as Ductile to Brittle Transition
Temperature (DBTT)
 Charpy impact testing is helpful in determining the DBTT
 As seen in Fig.7.9, metal starts to behave like a glass, below a
definite temperature. No toughness left.
 In polymers, it is named as Glassy Transition Temperature Tg.

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Fig.7.9. The ductile to brittle temperature transformation of steels.

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Ductile to Brittle Transition Temperature

 DBTT is an important failure type for BCC

 It is seen at cryogenic temperatures

Fig.7.10. The DBTT

behaviour of FCC and
BCC metals.

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Design for Improved DBTT

 Finer grained metals have lower DBTT

 Lower amount of inclusions also improve (shift to lower
temperatures) the DBTT.
 Steels with lower carbon content has also a low DBTT.
 Steels with low amount of dissloved oxygen content has also a low
DBTT.

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Fig.7.11a. The effect of dissolved oxygen on DBTT of steels.

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Fig.7.11b. The effect of sulphur content on DBTT of steels.

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Stress Corrosion Cracking

 Cracks form in metal alloys under definite environmental conditions.
 - All these factors must be present together:
 Residual Tensile Stress
 An environment
 A susceptible material

- Austenitic stainless steels >>>in Cl environment

- High strength steels >> Halide ions, nitric acid
- Copper alloys >> NH3 containing solutions

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Stress Corrosion Cracking

Sources of stress:
 Residual stresses from manufacture (cold deformation, assembly,
welding, solidification (casting))
 In service: Residual stresses due to: Overloading, Thermal cycling.

Fig.7.12. A crack formed due to SCC.

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Hydrogen Embrittlement
Source of Hydrogen in steels:

 During refining (precipitates upon solidification from supersaturated

concentrations)
 Acid cleaning (pickling) prior to coating etc.
 Electroplating
 Contact with water or other hydrogen-containing liquids or gases

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Hydrogen Embrittlement
The failure types caused by hydrogen:
 Hydrogen Embrittlement
 Hydrogen induced blistering (small bubble-like failures on the metal
surface)
 Inner cracks in large sectioned steels.

It is especially a problem for high strength steels.

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Fig.7.13. Intergranular fracture in a steel failed due to

HE. (during cadmium plating).

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