1997 Volume 46 Issue 10 Pages 1155-1160
Rotating bending fatigue tests were carried out on austempered ductile cast iron (ADI) in order to investigate the statistical properties of life distributions of crack initiation and propagation, and also the evaluation of fatigue life.
The results are summarized as follows: (1) The size of crack initiation sites of the material was represented by a Weibull distribution without regarding to the kinds of crack initiation sites such as microshrinkage and graphite grain. The crack initiation life scattered widely, but the scatter became much smaller as soon as the cracks grew. (2) The crack propagation life Nac which was defined as the minimum crack propagation rate showed lower scatter than the crack initation life. (3) The fatigue life of the material was evaluated well by Nac and the propagation rate after Nac. It was clear that the fatigue life of ductile cast iron was goverened by the scatter of Nac.
