Effect of Notch Severity on Fatigue Behaviour of ADI Castings

Khaled M. Ibrahim, Bakkar El-Sarnagawy, Ibrahim I. Saleh

Central Metallurgical Research and Development Institute, Cairo, Egypt.
Modern Academy for Engineering & Technology, Cairo, Egypt.

DOI: 10.4236/msa.2013.42012                

Abstract

An investigation was carried out to examine the influence of notch sensitivity on fatigue behaviour of austempered ductile iron (ADI). Samples were made of ductile iron with a chemical composition of 3.55% C, 2.18% Si, 0.35% Mn, 0.022 P, 0.008 S and 0.045% Mg. The samples were heat treated by austenitizing at 900℃ for 1 h and then rapidly quenched into two different salt baths at 350 and 400℃ for 1 h each. This work aims at studying the capability of mechanical stress analysis software (ANSYS 12.0), as a nondestructive tool, to characterize and quantify the fatigue strength of the notched ADI samples with different radii (from 1 to 3 mm). In addition, experimental testing was performed using rotary bending fatigue machine on notched samples with radii of 1, 1.5 and 2-mm to verify the theoretical data obtained by ANSYS-12. The results show that the predicted fatigue strength estimated by ANSYS-12 is very close to the experimental one. Therefore, fatigue performance of the rotating parts made of ADI can be estimated theoreticcally using ANSYS 12.0. The fatigue strength of these parts can also be improved by increasing the formed filled radius due to decreasing the notch sensitivity factor.

Keywords

ADI; ANSYS-12; Fatigue; Notch Sensitivity

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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