Low Cycle Fatigue of Electrodeposited Pure Nanocrystalline Metals

The fatigue behavior of metals is strongly governed by the grain size variation. As the tensile strength, the fatigue limit increases with decreasing grain size in the microcrystalline regime. A different trend in mechanical properties has been demonstrated in many papers for metals with ultrafine (< 1 m) and nanocrystalline (< 100 nm) grain size in particular in the yield stress and fatigue crack initiation and growth. The fatigue behavior of electrodeposited nanocrystalline Ni (20 and 40 nm mean grain size) and nanocrystalline Co (20 nm) has been analyzed in the present paper by means of stress controlled tests. The monothonic mechanical properties of the materials were obtained from tensile tests by employing an Instron 5800 machine by measuring the strain with an extensometer up to 2.5% maximum strain. The strain gage specimen dimensions measured 20 mm length and 5 mm width, all the specimens were produced by electro-discharge machining. The low cycle fatigue tests were performed with specimens of the same geometry of the tensile ones in tension-tension with load ratio R=0.25. The fatigue crack propagation experiments were carried out by employing single edge notched specimens measuring 39 mm in length, 9.9 mm in width and with an electro-discharge machined edge-notch of 1 mm. All the endurance fatigue and crack propagation tests were performed at 10 Hz.