Failure analysis of a carbon steel roller shaft of continuous pad steam machine

This paper presents the failure analysis of carbon steel roller shaft of continuous pad steam machine used in textile industry. The fracture position was located at a stepped diameter. The failed component was the shaft made of carbon steel AISI 1040. Standard procedure for failure analysis was employed in this investigation. Visual examination, chemical analysis, hardness and tensile strength measurements, microstructural characterization, fractography analysis by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) were used for the failure analysis. Using this failure analysis approach, we pinpointed the root cause of failure and developed a means of solving this type of failure in the future. Firstly, the chemical composition of the shaft is done by an Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) method, the found chemical composition was matching with required standard value. Mechanical testing consists of two test i.e. tensile test and hardness test and it was found out that the strength and hardness of specimens were within the required capacity. For metallurgical analysis, the microstructure of the shaft was developed by using an optical microstructure. Equal distribution of ferrite perlite shows that heat treatment was performed well and carbon percentage in a material is satisfying the standard values. Thus, it proves that the material used was of good quality and indicates that failure is not due to material property. Further for the fractography, the fractured surface was examined by SEM. The cross-section was taken in a quarter segments and divided into four regions i.e. A, B, C, and D. Fractography morphology mainly showed that the failure of roller shaft was caused due to fatigue. To examine the stress distribution at the fractured surface the Finite Element Method (FEM) was also carried out. Based on the shaft size, a precise ANSYS model was developed. The result of FEM shows that stress concentration was significant at roller shaft step which could reduce the material reliability to some extent. Based on the failure analysis it could be concluded that due to stress concentration a micro crack is initiated along the weak interface and further it converted into the major fatigue failure. Fractography morphology of failed roller shaft also confirms the fatigue failure.