The wear caused by contact stress fatigue is the result of a wide variety of mechanical forces and environments. This chapter discusses the characteristics of four types of contact stress fatigue on mating metal surfaces: surface, subsurface, subcase, and cavitation. Features and corrective actions for these contact stress fatigue are discussed. The chapter also lists some possible ways to reduce the cavitation fatigue problem.

Mechanical components often require surface treatments to meet application demands. This chapter describes several surface hardening treatments for steel and their effect on microstructure, composition, and properties. It discusses flame hardening, induction heating, carburizing, nitriding, carbonitriding, and nitrocarburizing. The discussion on carburizing addresses several interrelated factors, including processing principles, alloying, surface oxidation, residual stresses, bending fatigue, contact fatigue, and fracture.

The design of case-hardened components is an iterative process, requiring the consideration of multiple interrelated factors. This chapter walks readers through the steps involved in selecting an appropriate material and assessing the influence of alloy composition and cooling rate on core properties including hardenability, microstructure, tensile and yield strength, ductility, toughness, and fatigue resistance. It likewise explains how carbon affects case hardenability, surface hardness, and case toughness and how case depth influences residual stresses and bending and contact fatigue. It also discusses the effect of quenching methods and addresses the issue of distortion.

This chapter familiarizes readers with tempering and refrigeration treatments and their effect on case-carburized parts. It explains how tempering makes such parts easier to machine, more structurally and dimensionally stable, and more durable in certain applications. It identifies key process parameters and provides test data showing how they affect hardness, yield strength, bending and contact fatigue, and fracture toughness. It also addresses potential problems stemming from process-related factors such as the presence of hydrogen and the effects of aging and grinding. In regard to refrigeration, the chapter explains that it is not uncommon for subzero treatments to be included in the production of carburized parts whether as a standard procedure or optional step. Subzero cooling promotes the transformation of retained austenite to martensite, thereby increasing surface hardness and reducing the propensity of quenched carburized steels to burn and crack during surface grinding. The chapter includes numerous data plots and tables showing how the various treatments influence hardness, wear resistance, tensile properties, and fatigue and fracture behaviors.

This chapter discusses the various factors influencing the evaluation of fatigue fracture of nitrided layers. It begins by describing the problems of enhancing the fatigue resistance of machine components. The significance and detailed assessment of the effect of a structural flaw are then explained, using investigations of the effect of variable core conditions on fatigue resistance as an example. This is followed by a discussion on the processes involved in the evaluation of fatigue properties of nitrided steels. The chapter also describes the determination of the fatigue characteristics of nitrided steels after the carbonitriding treatment.

This article reviews fatigue test methodologies, provides an overview of general fatigue behavior (crack initiation and propagation) in engineering plastics, and discusses some of the factors affecting the fatigue performance of polymers. In addition, it provides information on fractography that provides useful insight into the nature of fracture processes.

This chapter examines the stress-strain characteristics of metals and alloys subjected to cyclic loading and the cumulative effects of fatigue. It begins by explaining how a single load reversal can lower the yield stress of a material and how repeated reversals can cause strain hardening and softening, both of which lead to premature failure. It then discusses the stages of fatigue fracture, using detailed images to show how cracks initiate and grow and how they leave telltale marks on fracture surfaces. It goes on to describe fatigue life assessment methods and demonstrate their use on different metals and alloys. The chapter also discusses design-based approaches for preventing fatigue failures.

Boiler tubes subjected to cyclic or fluctuating loads over extended periods of time are prone to fatigue failure. Fatigue can occur at relatively low stresses and is implicated in almost 80% of the tube failures in firetube boilers. This chapter covers the most common forms of boiler tube fatigue, including mechanical or vibrational fatigue, corrosion fatigue, thermal fatigue, and creep-fatigue interaction. It discusses the causes, characteristics, and impacts of each type and provides several case studies.

Fatigue fractures are generally considered the most serious type of fracture in machinery parts simply because fatigue fractures can and do occur in normal service, without excessive overloads, and under normal operating conditions. This chapter first discusses the three stages (initiation, propagation, and final rupture) of fatigue fracture followed by a discussion of its microscopic and macroscopic characteristics. The relationship between stress and strength in fatigue is explained. The next section provides information that may help the uninitiated to appreciate some of the problems of laboratory fatigue testing and of the fatigue process itself. Finally, information on types and statistical aspects of fatigue is provided along with examples.

Unlike metals, in which fatigue failures are due to a single crack that grows to a critical length, the effects of fatigue in composites are much more distributed and varied. As the chapter explains, there are five major damage mechanisms that contribute to the progression of composite fatigue, those being matrix cracking, fiber breaking, crack coupling, delamination initiation, and delamination growth. The chapter describes each mechanism in detail along with related factors. It also discusses the primary differences between composites and metals, the effect of manufacturing defects, damage tolerance, and testing and certification.

This chapter covers the fatigue and fracture behaviors of ceramics and polymers. It discusses the benefits of transformation toughening, the use of ceramic-matrix composites, fracture mechanisms, and the relationship between fatigue and subcritical crack growth. In regard to polymers, it covers general characteristics, viscoelastic properties, and static strength. It also discusses fatigue life, impact strength, fracture toughness, and stress-rupture behaviors as well as environmental effects such as plasticization, solvation, swelling, stress cracking, degradation, and surface embrittlement.

Fatigue failures occur due to the application of fluctuating stresses that are much lower than the stress required to cause failure during a single application of stress. This chapter describes three basic factors that cause fatigue: a maximum tensile stress of sufficiently high value, a large enough variation or fluctuation in the applied stress, and a sufficiently large number of cycles of the applied stress. The discussion covers high-cycle fatigue, low-cycle fatigue, and fatigue crack propagation. The chapter then discusses the stages where fatigue crack nucleation and growth occurs. It describes the most effective methods of improving fatigue life. The chapter also explains the effect of geometrical stress concentrations on fatigue. In addition, it explores the environmental effects of corrosion fatigue, low-temperature fatigue, high-temperature fatigue, and thermal fatigue. Finally, the chapter discusses a number of design philosophies or methodologies to deal with design against fatigue failures.

This chapter discusses the factors that play a role in fatigue failures and how they affect the service life of metals and structures. It describes the stresses associated with high-cycle and low-cycle fatigue and how they differ from the loading profiles typically used to generate fatigue data. It compares the Gerber, Goodman, and Soderberg methods for predicting the effect of mean stress from bending data, describes the statistical nature of fatigue measurements, and explains how plastic strain causes cyclic hardening and softening. It discusses the work of Wohler, Basquin, and others and how it led to the development of a strain-based approach to fatigue and the use of fatigue strength and ductility coefficients. It reviews the three stages of fatigue, beginning with crack initiation followed by crack growth and final fracture. It explains how fracture mechanics can be applied to crack propagation and how stress concentrations affect fatigue life. It also discusses fatigue life improvement methods and design approaches.

This chapter discusses the causes and effects of wear along with prevention methods. It covers abrasive, erosive, erosion-corrosion, grinding, gouging, adhesive, and fretting wear. It also discusses various forms of contact-stress fatigue, including subsurface-origin fatigue, surface-origin fatigue, subcase-origin fatigue (spalling fatigue), and cavitation fatigue.

This chapter discusses the fatigue behavior of bolted, riveted, and welded joints. It describes the relative strength of machined and rolled threads and the effect of thread design, preload, and clamping force on the fatigue strength of bolts made from different steels. It explains where fatigue failures are likely to occur in cold-driven rivet and friction joints, and why the fatigue strength of welded joints can be much lower than that of the parent metal, depending on weld shape, joint geometry, discontinuities, and residual stresses. The chapter also explains how to improve the fatigue life of welded joints and discusses the factors that can reduce the fracture toughness of weld metals.

Environmentally assisted cracking is a generic term that includes various cracking phenomena such as stress-corrosion cracking (SCC), corrosion fatigue cracking, and liquid-metal embrittlement. This chapter describes these cracking mechanisms beginning with SCC and the factors that influence its formation. It covers alloy selection and mitigation techniques and includes examples of SCC in aircraft components. The chapter also addresses corrosion fatigue, explaining how different environments and operating conditions affect crack propagation, fatigue strength, and fatigue life. It includes information on liquid-metal embrittlement as well.

This chapter discusses the basic principles of friction and the factors that must be considered when determining its effect on moving bodies in contact. It provides an extensive amount of friction data, including static and kinetic friction coefficients for numerous combinations of engineering materials and coatings. It also describes the causes and effects of the most common forms of wear, the conditions under which they occur, the role of lubrication, and wear testing methods.

This chapter discusses the effect of friction in the context of design. It explains how friction coefficients are determined and how they are used to make sizing and selection decisions. It covers practical issues associated with rolling friction, the use of lubricants, and the tribology of metal, ceramic, and polymer surfaces in contact. It also discusses the nature of rolling friction and provides helpful design guidelines.

This chapter covers coatings and treatments that are used to improve the friction and wear behaviors of materials. It describes modifications that work by hardening contacting surfaces, including heat treating, vacuum coating, thermal spray, and plating, and those that separate or lubricate surfaces, including solid film, chemical conversion, and vacuum coatings, surface oiling and texturing, and lubricating platings. It compares and contrasts methods based on thickness and depth and their relative effect on friction, erosion, and wear.

Durability is a generic term used to describe the performance of a material or a component made from that material in a given application. In order to be durable, a material must resist failure by wear, corrosion, fracture, fatigue, deformation, and exposure to a range of service temperatures. This chapter covers several types of component and material failure associated with wear, temperature effects, and crack growth. It examines temperature-induced, brittle, ductile, and fatigue failures as well as failures due to abrasive, erosive, adhesive, and fretting wear and cavitation fatigue. It also discusses preventative measures.