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Very high cycle fatigue tests of quenched and self-tempered steel reinforcement bars

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Abstract

Investigations on the fatigue strength of steel reinforcement bars (rebars) mainly involves fatigue tests with hot rolled (HR) and cold worked (CW) steels. However, in the last few decades, HR and CW rebars were replaced by quenched and self-tempered (QST) rebars with hardened surface layer. There still remains a lack of research on fatigue strength of QST rebars especially in the very high cycle domain i.e., number of stress cycles surpassing 5 million. This study is part of a further detailed investigation on the fatigue behaviour of HR, CW and QST rebars in the very high cycle domain. It aims to investigate the fatigue performance of QST rebars axially tested at number of stress cycles in the range of 106–108. A preliminary study of the gripping method is followed by fatigue test results including non-destructive inspection of the rebar surface and fractographic analyses. The rebar surface is examined with liquid penetrant to reveal fatigue crack location and size in specific frequency interval monitored during the tests. Fractured surface analyses are performed by scanning electron microscopy to detect the location from where fatigue cracks initiate. Cross sectional area reduction resulting from fatigue crack propagation is also determined. Fractographic investigations are compared with the fractured surfaces of HR, CW and QST rebars from the literature.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Danièle Laub from the Interdisciplinary Centre For Electron Microscopy (CIME) at EPFL for her advices and help with the sample preparation for the microscopic analyses. We are also grateful to Prof. Francesco Stellacci from the Supramolecular Nanomaterials and Interfaces Laboratory (SuNMIL) who provided the laboratory space for the preparation of the samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Structural Maintenance and Safety Laboratory (MCS), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Marina Rocha & Eugen Brühwiler

  2. Mechanical Systems Engineering Laboratory, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA), Dübendorf, Switzerland

    Silvain Michel

  3. Steel Structures Laboratory (ICOM), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

    Alain Nussbaumer

Authors
  1. Marina Rocha
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  2. Silvain Michel
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  3. Eugen Brühwiler
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  4. Alain Nussbaumer
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Correspondence to Marina Rocha.

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Rocha, M., Michel, S., Brühwiler, E. et al. Very high cycle fatigue tests of quenched and self-tempered steel reinforcement bars. Mater Struct 49, 1723–1732 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-015-0607-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-015-0607-5

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