Effect of reinforcements on rolling contact fatigue behaviors of titanium matrix composite (TiB + TiC)/Ti–6Al–4V

• The microstructure variations analyzed with SEM reveal the plastic flows.
• The reinforcements are prone to flake off and fracture in the damaged layers.
• The rolling pressure and cyclic stress are adverse to the RCF lives.
• The reinforcements cause the reduction of RCF lives due to stress concentration.
• The relative RCF lives are predicted via a new numerical method.

Rolling contact fatigue (RCF) behaviors of titanium matrix composites (TiB + TiC)/Ti–6Al–4V are investigated, including the microstructural variables, the stress distribution and the RCF life. The effect of reinforcements on RCF is observed in detail. The microstructural information, especially pertaining to the reinforcements, is obtained through scanning electron microscope. The influence of reinforcements on stress distribution is studied via analyses of subsurface stress distributions based on an approximate numerical method, in which the reinforcement distributions are taken into account. The results reveal that the existence of reinforcements causes RCF life reduction due to the stress concentration in and around the reinforcements.