Corrosion resistance has been the main scope of the development in high-alloyed low carbon austenitic stainless steels. However, the chemical composition influences not only the passivity but also significantly affects their metastability and, consequently, the transformation as well as the cyclic deformation behavior. In technical applications, the austenitic stainless steels undergo fatigue in low cycle fatigue (LCF), high cycle fatigue (HCF), and very high cycle fatigue (VHCF) regime at room and elevated temperatures. In this context, the paper focuses on fatigue and transformation behavior at ambient temperature and 300 °C of two batches of metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 347 in the whole fatigue regime from LCF to VHCF. Fatigue tests were performed on two types of testing machines: (i) servohydraulic and (ii) ultrasonic with frequencies: at (i) 0.01 Hz (LCF), 5 and 20 Hz (HCF) and 980 Hz (VHCF); and at (ii) with 20 kHz (VHCF). The results show the significant influence of chemical composition and temperature of deformation induced ´-martensite formation and cyclic deformation behavior. Furthermore, a “true” fatigue limit of investigated metastable austenitic stainless steel AISI 347 was identified including the VHCF regime at ambient temperature and elevated temperatures.

No abstract

This study presents the results of a detailed investigation of metastability and susceptibility to deformation induced α'-martensite formation of several austenitic steels (AISI 304, AISI 321, AISI 348 and two batches from AISI 347) in the solution-annealed state. Besides conventional characterization of metastability by calculating stacking-fault energy and threshold temperature (designated as M S and M d30 ), the present work introduced a new method for determining susceptibility to α'-martensite formation. The method was based on dynamically applied local plastic deformation and non-destructive micro-magnetic measurement of α'-martensite content. The parameter I ξ was established, which correlated very well with the grade of α'-martensite formation during cyclic loading. The cyclic deformation and phase transformation behavior of cyclically loaded specimens from different metastable austenitic steels were investigated in total-strain and stress controlled fatigue tests with load ratio R = -1 at ambient temperature. The influence of the strain rate on the cyclic deformation and phase transformation behavior was also examined. During the fatigue tests, besides stress-strain hysteresis and temperature measurement, in situ micro-magnetic measurements were performed. Using the compressive measured data, the influence of plastic induced self-heating of the specimen and the strain rate on α'-martensite formation was analyzed.

The present study investigates conventional and cryogenically turned specimens of metastable austenitic steel AISI 347 and stable austenitic steel AISI 904L in the VHCF regime. The cryogenic turning process includes cooling by CO2 snow and generates a surface layer on the specimens of metastable austenitic steel, which is characterized by a phase transformation from paramagnetic fcc - austenite to ferromagnetic bcc - martensite and grain refinement. The stable austenitic steel retains its purely austenitic structure after cryogenic turning, but also shows grain refinement in the surface layer. The specimens with different surface morphology were cyclically loaded at ambient temperature using an ultrasonic fatigue testing system developed and built at the authors’ institute. The testing machine operates at frequencies of approx. 20 kHz to achieve high numbers of load cycles within a reasonable time. To avoid self heating of the specimen, the tests were performed in pulse-pause mode. All specimens were tested with a load ratio of R = -1. During cyclic loading, the metastable austenitic steel partially transformed from paramagnetic fcc - austenite to ferromagnetic bcc - martensite, while no phase transformation could be detected in the stable austenitic steel.