Corrosion fatigue behaviors of steel wires used in coalmine

•The CF life of steel wire in acid solution is the shortest.•The fatigue source zone showed dimple morphology when coupled with anode potential.•The area of dimple increases with the increase of the applied anode potential.•The strong cathode potential cannot reduce the CF life of the smooth steel wire.•The hydrogen impacted mainly on the plastic deformation of the wire surface.

The corrosion fatigue (CF) behaviors of the mining steel wire in different solutions at different applied polarization potentials were investigated in this paper. The surfaces and fracture morphologies of the steel wire at different applied potentials were observed by scanning electron microscope (SEM). The results showed that the CF life of steel wire in acid solution is the shortest. Moreover, the strong anodic polarization potential greatly reduced the CF life of steel wire, while the strong cathode potential did not reduce the CF life. For the smooth steel wire, the hydrogen impacted mainly on the plastic deformation of the wire surface. There was obvious dimple in the fatigue source zone of the wire when coupled with anode potential, and the area of the dimple increased with the increase of the applied anode potential. Conversely, the fatigue source zone of the fracture was relatively smooth at cathode polarization potential, which indicated that the crack propagation followed the mechanism of hydrogen induced cracking.