A unique geometry is presented that creates biaxial stresses and strains when subjected to uniaxial loading in order to facilitate further multiaxial fatigue research by reducing the need for the use of specialized multiaxial loading equipment. Cyclic plasticity is a critical process in fatigue and the geometry was successfully designed and fabricated to allow for the continuous monitoring of cyclic plastic strains of magnitude 10^(-4) mm/mm during cyclic loading. Simulation results show that plasticity occurs in a region central to the test specimen while also being subjected to biaxial stresses and strains characterized by average principal direction ratios of 1.18 and 1.39 respectively. Simulation shows fatigue life of the specimen to be 79 thousand cycles, which allows for a reasonable evolution of cyclic plasticity before reaching failure. Issues with the instrumentation process hindered experimental validation of the simulation results.
Design of a thermally stable nano-crystalline alloy with superior tensile creep and fatigue behavior
Strategic engineering of nanometer sized clusters of Ta into the alloy’s microstructure were found to suppress the microstructure instability and render remarkable improvement in the high temperature tensile creep resistance up to 0.64 times the melting temperature of Cu. Primary creep in this alloy was found to be governed by the relaxation of the microstructure under the applied stress. Further, during the secondary creep, short circuit diffusion of grain boundary atoms resulted in the negligible steady-state creep rate in the alloy. Under fatigue loading, the alloy showed higher resistance for crack nucleation owing to the inherent microstructural stability, and the interaction of the dislocations with the Ta nanoclusters. The underlying mechanism was found to be related to the diffused damage accumulation, i.e., during cyclic loading many grains participate in the plasticity process (nucleation of discrete grain boundary dislocations) resulting in homogenous accumulation rather than localized one as typically observed in coarse-grained materials. Overall, the engineered Ta nanoclusters were responsible for governing the underlying anomalous high temperature creep and fatigue deformation mechanisms in the alloy.
Finally, this study presents a design approach that involves alloying of pure metals in order to impart stability in NC materials and significantly enhance their structural properties, especially those at higher temperatures. Moreover, this design approach can be easily translated to other multicomponent systems for developing advanced high-performance structural materials.