Fatigue Crack Arrest in Mild Steel via Iron Electroplating

Abstract

In this work, electrochemical plating treatments were applied to ASTM A36 steel specimens to study the efficiency and limitations of this method for arresting fatigue crack propagation. Electroplated iron was deposited onto the crack surfaces using a circuit in which Swedish Iron served as the anode in a solution of Ammonium Iron(II) Sulfate Hexahydrate. The iron ions were driven into fatigue cracks that were formed within ASTM E399 compact tension specimens. This work showed that an iron-plating treatment operated at 20°C can arrest fatigue crack propagation for a significant period of cycles. The propagation re-initiation lives that resulted ranged from 11,000 to 230,000 cycles. As observed in prior work, the propagation re-initiation life correlated strongly to the magnitude of the stress intensity factor range that was applied during cycling. As this stress intensity increased, the propagation re-initiation life decreased. Repeated treatments on the same crack provided extended service lives by as much as 370,000 cycles or 60% of the entire fatigue life of the component. Future work may show that re-application of the treatment, when conducted prior to crack re-initiation, could further extend the service life indefinitely. The Correia crack closure model was modified to provide an empirical expression for predicting the crack re-initiation life of the treated component. Interestingly, highly effective arrest behavior was still observed for cracks that were loaded to stress intensity factors of only 3 - 6 during the treatment but then subjected to 20 during cyclic loading. Galvanic corrosion of the plated material exposed to simulated seawater was estimated to be 3 mpy. Future work will examine the use of less active plating alloys and the possibility of applying effective treatments into cracks that are in an unloaded state.