Abstract
In structures, it is probable that the plastic deformation will occur locally by the unexpected large stress, for instance, intensified by discontinuity, or the applied stress superimposed on the residual stress, and so on. The effect of pre-strain on the corrosion-fatigue of steel was investigated in the present investigation.
The experiments were carried out by reversed bending on the tensile pre-strained specimen of a high tensile steel plate. The corrosive was sea water. The fatigue strength in air was remarkably decreased by pre-strain. The results can be explained by the assumption that the fatigue fracture will happen when the sum of the absorbed energy per cycle of stress of a specimen during testing reaches a defined value. In sea water, owing to the corrosive action, the absorbed energy required to fracture will be small compared with that in air, and then the fatigue strengths in the former are inferior to those in the latter.
