Tensile pre-strain effects on torsional fatigue properties of medium carbon steels

This study was focused on the effects of pre-strain on the torsional fatigue properties of three kinds of medium carbon steels, including the fatigue strength, surface hardness, microstructure, and the crack initiation and propagation behaviors. The effect of pre-strain on the non-propagating cracks was also discussed. The main results obtained in this test are as follows: 1) the fatigue limits increase with the increasing of tensile pre-strain ratio for all kinds of the test materials; 2) under certain stress amplitude, with the increasing of tensile pre-strain ratio, the fatigue crack initiates a little earlier and propagates faster; 3) the length of non-propagating crack decreases with the increasing of tensile pre-strain ratio.