Fatigue life of stainless steel 304 enhancement by addition of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)

Stainless steel is among the most widely used industrial materials. In particular, stainless steel 304 (304SS) is the most used material grade. To increase the utilization of any industrial material, its fatigue life should be optimized. In this work, the fatigue life of 304SS was enhanced by the addition of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Moreover, the incorporation of a small amount of MWCNTs increased the fatigue life of 304SS. Scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results showed that the suppression of fatigue crack growth rate was caused by CNT deposition at the crack tip. CNTs were entangled with each other, thereby resulting in finer grain size. The XRD diffractograms of the 304SS treated area peak showed that the microstructure consisted of austenite and carbon.