Faceted crack initiation characteristics for high-cycle and very-high-cycle fatigue of a titanium alloy under different stress ratios

Ultrasonic fatigue tests were conducted at the stress ratios of −1, −0.5, −0.1, 0.1 and 0.5 for a Ti-6Al-4V alloy in high-cycle and very-high-cycle fatigue regimes. Experimental results showed that faceted crack initiation was the main failure mode for specimens at the stress ratios of −0.1, 0.1 and 0.5, and multi-site faceted crack initiation was observed at the stress ratios of 0.1 and 0.5. The measurements indicated that the number of facets increased with the increase of stress ratio. Based on the observations, the mechanism of faceted crack initiation was proposed, i.e., (i) cleavage of isolated primary α grains in cluster; (ii) gradual growth of originated cracks (facets), and the coalescence of adjacent facets; and (iii) coalesced facets forming a main crack in the cluster. Moreover, a model based on Poisson defect distribution is proposed to describe the effects of stress ratio on faceted crack initiation, which is in agreement with the experimental results.