Fatigue cracks in Eurofer 97 steel: Part I. Nucleation and small crack growth kinetics

Fatigue crack nucleation and growth were studied in the Eurofer 97 ferritic-martensitic steel at room temperature. Cylindrical specimens with a shallow notch and no artificial crack starters were used. The constant strain amplitude cycling was adopted. First fatigue cracks nucleate at about 5% of the fatigue life along the surface slip bands. If a crack overcome the barrier of the first high angle boundary, its growth is regular and an exponential growth law is observed. This law may be used for the residual fatigue life prediction based on the small crack growth kinetics.