Residual stress redistribution induced by fatigue in cold-drawn prestressing steel wires

• Fatigue loading clearly reduces tensile residual stresses at the wire surface.
• This effect is even better for wires with high tensile surface residual stresses.
• Such a reduction undoubtedly improves the fatigue performance of the cold drawn wires.
• It is beneficial from the viewpoint of H embrittlement susceptibility of the wires.
• Minor fatigue-induced reduction appears in residual stresses of compressive nature.

In this paper the evolution of diverse residual stress states (similar to the ones produced after a cold drawing process) during several fatigue loading schemes is analysed. Thus, numerical simulations by finite element method were carried out applying diverse fatigue loading schemes to several cold drawn wires with a residual stress state associated. Numerical results reveal the key role of plastic strains produced by fatigue loading causing a redistribution of the residual stress when tensile stresses are placed at the wire surface. However, a negligible effect is obtained for wires with a compressive residual stress associated.

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