Fatigue fracture is the major threat to the railway axle, which can be avoided or delayed by surface strengthening. In this study, a low-carbon alloy axle steel with two states was treated by surface induction hardeni...Fatigue fracture is the major threat to the railway axle, which can be avoided or delayed by surface strengthening. In this study, a low-carbon alloy axle steel with two states was treated by surface induction hardening and shot peening, respectively, to reveal the mechanism of fatigue property improvement by microstructure characterization, microhardness measurement, residual stress analysis, roughness measurement, and rotary bending fatigue tests. The results indicate that both quenching and tempering treatment can effectively improve the fatigue properties of the modified axle steel. In addition, induction hardening can create an ideal hardened layer on the sample surface by phase transformation from the microstructure of ferrite and pearlite to martensite. By comparison, shot peening can modify the microstructure in surface layer by surface severe plastic deformation introducing a large number of dislocation and even cause grain refinement. Both induction hardening and shot peening create compressive residual stress into the surface layer of axle steel sample, which can effectively reduce the stress level applied to the metal surface during the rotary bending fatigue tests. On the whole, the contribution of induction hardening to the fatigue life of axle steel sample is better than that of the shot peening, and induction hardening shows obvious advantages in improving the fatigue life of axle steel.展开更多
基金financially supported by the National Key Research and Development Project(No.2017YFB0703004)the National Natural Science Foundation of China(NSFC,No.U1664253)the LiaoNing Revitalization Talents Program(No.XLYC1808027)。
文摘Fatigue fracture is the major threat to the railway axle, which can be avoided or delayed by surface strengthening. In this study, a low-carbon alloy axle steel with two states was treated by surface induction hardening and shot peening, respectively, to reveal the mechanism of fatigue property improvement by microstructure characterization, microhardness measurement, residual stress analysis, roughness measurement, and rotary bending fatigue tests. The results indicate that both quenching and tempering treatment can effectively improve the fatigue properties of the modified axle steel. In addition, induction hardening can create an ideal hardened layer on the sample surface by phase transformation from the microstructure of ferrite and pearlite to martensite. By comparison, shot peening can modify the microstructure in surface layer by surface severe plastic deformation introducing a large number of dislocation and even cause grain refinement. Both induction hardening and shot peening create compressive residual stress into the surface layer of axle steel sample, which can effectively reduce the stress level applied to the metal surface during the rotary bending fatigue tests. On the whole, the contribution of induction hardening to the fatigue life of axle steel sample is better than that of the shot peening, and induction hardening shows obvious advantages in improving the fatigue life of axle steel.
