Development of a new device to perform torsional ultrasonic fatigue testing

The interest in gaining experimental knowledge on fatigue strength of materials over 109 cycles is rapidly increasing as evidenced for the large amount of investigations on this subject presented at the last very high cycle fatigue meeting (VHCF-3), held on September 2004. Most of the fatigue results presented at this conference were obtained under tension-compression, rotating bending, flexion and bending cyclic loading (some attaining 1010 cycles), using ultrasonic devices whose design was based on the natural frequency principles. In general, very little literature concerning the metallic alloys behavior under torsion cyclic loading using ultrasonic is available; however, in order to perform an accurate component design under multi-axial loading and VHCF, the material behavior under torsion cyclic loading is required. This investigation presents the development of a new mechanical device for testing and characterizing metallic alloys in the range of 109–1010 cycles in torsional cyclic loading and the first experimental results for medium carbon steel (38MnSV5S). The new device was designed to excite the components under testing with pure torsional vibration mode at a frequency of 20 kHz.