On the fatigue behavior of ultrafine-grained interstitial-free steel

The present paper reports on the cyclic stress-strain response of body-centered cubic ultrafine-grained (UFG) interstitial-free (IF) steel severely plastically deformed at room temperature utilizing equal channel angular extrusion (ECAE). Low-cycle fatigue tests were conducted with various strain amplitudes and strain rates on samples obtained through different ECAE routes and number of ECAE passes in order to determine the optimum processing route(s) for improved fatigue response of this material. UFG IF steel is superior to its coarse grained counterpart under both monotonic and cyclic loading in terms of properties, such as stress ranges tolerated, strength levels attained, and the corresponding fatigue behavior. All UFG steels subjected to more than 4 ECAE passes exhibit stable cyclic stress-strain response. Moreover, it was shown that dynamic grain coarsening, which usually leads to cyclic softening in UFG materials, is not prevalent in the ECAE processed UFG IF steel. For representing the fatigue life of UFG IF steel, the parameter after Smith, Watson and Topper, which is an indication of energy dissipation per cycle, proved adequate while comparing materials obtained through different ECAE routes.