Materials

& Design
Materials and Design 26 (2005) 700–704
www.elsevier.com/locate/matdes

Short Communication

Effect of magnetic treatment on fatigue life of AISI 4140 steel

Ayhan Çelik, A. Fatih Yetim *, Akgün Alsaran, Mehmet Karakan
Mechanical Engineering Department, Ataturk University, 25240 Erzurum, Turkey

Received 15 March 2004; accepted 3 September 2004

Available online 19 December 2004

Abstract

The effect of magnetic field with different intensities on fatigue life of AISI 4140 steel has been investigated. For this purpose,
unnotched and notched specimens were prepared from AISI 4140 steel. It was obtained that when the magnetic field especially
was applied to the specimens at the stage of fatigue crack initiation, the fatigue life improved by reason of delaying formation time
of slip bands due to regular direction and distribution of magnetic domains. And, it was observed that magnetic field was applied
from the beginning of fatigue test up to occur the fatigue fracture, it was detrimental on the fatigue life because of over heating of the
specimens.

2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Magnetic treatment; Fatigue life; Crack initiation; Domain

1. Introduction tion of iron. In addition, some researchers investigated

the effect of magnetic field on the wear resistance. The
Fatigue damage is known as an inevitable and wear resistance capability of magnetic treated samples
irreversable process in components subjected to repea- was 1.5–2 times that of the untreated ones [4]. During
tiative stresses. Researchers have tended to find various the wear test, it was especially very important direction
technical methods to decreasing the fatigue damage of applied magnetic field. Hiratsuka and Sasada [5] ob-
because of the limited raw materials and high costs tained that the wear resistance increased, if the magnetic
of production and operating. The fatigue life of mate- field was applied the direction of horizontal. This result
rials can be improved with classical methods as nitrid- explained in term of accelerated oxidation of debris and
ing and carburing by increasing surface hardness and their fine size. Zaidai [6] also reported that there was the
producing compressive residual stresses at the material lubrication effect of very fine debris during the wear test.
surface. Recently, a new opinion has been proposed Bau-Tong et al. [7] subjected to fatigue loading the spec-
that ‘‘may the fatigue life of materials be improved, imens up to a certain cycle without magnetic field and
if an external magnetic or electrical energy is applied then magnetic field applied on specimen. In the end of
on materials?’’ [1,2]. this study, they determined that magnetic field repaired
There are many studies concerned with the effect of the fatigue damage, if early fatigue damage did not ex-
magnetic treatment on mechanical and tribological ceed a critical value. Bhat et al. [8] applied the magnetic
properties of material. Kamnetskaya et al. [3] reported field up to failure during the fatigue test. Results showed
that magnetic field increased creep and tensile deforma- that fatigue strength concerned with magnetic satura-
tion of material. It was obtained that fatigue life de-
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 442 231 48 40; fax: +90 442 236
creased when magnetic field intensity exceeded this
09 57. saturation point of material. Fahmy et al. [9] found that
E-mail address: [email protected] (A. F. Yetim). fatigue life of specimens subjected to the magnetic pulse

0261-3069/$ - see front matter
2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.matdes.2004.09.003
 A. Çelik et al. / Materials and Design 26 (2005) 700–704 701

treatment of 210 s at intervals of every 100,000 cycles for In each test, the number of cycles to fatigue failure
a certain stress level improved. was noted on semi-log (S, log N) graphs. Staircase meth-
In all studies related to fatigue damage, the materials od was just used to find fatigue strength.
were subjected to permanent magnetic field during total
fatigue life or before fatigue test. In the light of these
informations, the main objective of the study presented 3. Results and discussions
was to examine the effect of magnetic field on fatigue
crack initiation and fatigue crack propagation by apply- The S–N curve for unnotched specimens was deter-
ing magnetic field up to a certain cycle of fatigue life. mined and the fatigue fracture cycle according to stress
During the fatigue test, magnetic field was applied up level for unnotched specimen is given in Table 2. Then,
to 30%, 30–60%, 100% of fatigue fracture cycle and at every stress levels, 30% and 60% of fracture cycles
then, it was continued to fatigue tests by shutting down were calculated by the average of fracture cycles. Thus,
magnetic field source. In this study, the effect of mag- during the fatigue test the specimens were subjected to
netic field was investigated by rotating bending fatigue magnetic fields of 800 and 1300 G up to certain cycles,
test machine, electro-magnet and atomic force micros- for which an example is given for 710 MPa as follows:
copy (AFM). the unnotched specimens subjected to fatigue loading
during magnetic field up to 30% (25,000 cycles) and
100% and between 30–60% (25,000–50,000 cycles) of
2. Experimental details the fatigue fracture cycle of the untreated specimen
(83,000 cycles) which is the average value of the fatigue
The low alloyed AISI 4140 steel has been used in the fracture cycle of the untreated specimen at 710 MPa. As
study and its chemical composition is tabulated in Table known, at high cycles fatigue for unnotched materials,
1. The specimens were normalized at 850 C for 30 min, the fatigue crack initiation was occupies the main part
and then cooled in air. To determine the effect of mag- of the total fatigue life and the crack initiation was
netic field on fatigue crack initiation and growth, it started after 10% of total fatigue life. Therefore, process
was prepared two different specimens, unnotched and B was directly effected fatigue crack initiation. A signif-
notched specimens. icant improvement in fatigue life has been observed
Experimental system schematically given in Fig. 1 when the processes A, B and A, C are compared. While
was prepared to be able to magnetic field during the fa- fatigue limit of untreated specimen was 525 MPa, this
tigue test. The system contains two main parts. One of value increased 590 MPa when process B was applied
these is magnetic field source and other fatigue test ma- and increased 630 MPa when process C was applied.
chine. As a DC magnetic field producer, an electro-mag- Also, the S–N curves obtained from rotating bending fa-
net produced by coiling copper on iron core was utilized. tigue tests for unnotched specimens are given in Fig. 3.
Magnetic field intensities were measured by gaussmeter. These results can be explained with dislocation en-
Fatigue strength was determined using a rotating ergy and movement. The ferromagnetic materials con-
bending fatigue machine. The geometry of specimens sist domains called magnetic domains. In Fig. 4, it was
used for fatigue testing is shown in Fig. 2. The diameter observed directed magnetic domains by result of apply-
of notch for notched specimens is 1 mm. Rotating bend- ing magnetic field of 800 G. Magnetization process re-
ing fatigue testing was performed at 5000 rpm in labora- quires the movement of domain walls. The presence of
tory air atmosphere and carried out until the complete walls affects plastic flow by hindering dislocation move-
failure of specimens. The machine is provided with a ment. The application of an external magnetic field
digital counter that shows the number of load cycles en- which causes some degree of domain rotation necessar-
dured by the test specimen. The fatigue test machine ily decreases their orientation randomness. In fact the
stopped automatically as soon as the specimen failure aim of application of external magnetic field is to give
occurred. Twenty-six specimens were used to determine an energy to the specimens. These parts where disloca-
the S–N curve for unnotched and notched specimens; tions are density are called ‘‘cell structure’’ when mag-
i.e., 15 specimens for the fatigue life (three specimens netic field apply, the cell structures disappear and
at each of five levels of stress amplitude) and 11 speci- dislocation distribution becomes much uniform. In the
mens for the finite fatigue life region. The staircase result of application magnetic field to the metals, move-
method was employed to determine fatigue strength. ment ability and energy of dislocations increase [10].

Table 1
Chemical composition of AISI 4140 steel (%)
Element C Mn Si Cr Ni Mo V S Cu P
wt% 0.36 0.80 0.005 0.014 0.30 0.85 0.075 0.07 0.143 0.034
702 A. Çelik et al. / Materials and Design 26 (2005) 700–704

Fig. 1. Schematic illustration of applying magnetic field during the fatigue test.

Thereby, the dislocations were over came the obstacles among dislocations and other obstacles is decreased
which dislocations can not exceed them without an and so, the possibility of dislocation reaction and wind-
external magnetic field. The tendency of interaction ing is significantly lowered. In sum, the magnetic

Table 2
The results of fatigue life for unnotched specimens
Stress levels (MPa) Processes
A B C D E
550 1,698,000 65 · 106 – 2,750,000 –
1,457,000 65 · 106 – 1,580,000 –
1,358,000 65 · 106 – 1,610,000 –
590 857,000 65 · 106 – 720,000 –
598,000 65 · 106 – 910,000 –
772,000 2,505,000 65 · 106 630,000 –
630 272,000 370,000 65 · 106 303,000 –
538,000 640,000 2,501,000 307,000 –
427,000 882,000 1,124,000 350,000 –
670 140,000 353,000 517,000 145,000 180,000
237,000 324,000 485,000 149,000 130,000
176,000 395,000 245,000 180,000 107,000
710 73,000 41,000 88,000 43,000 33,000
65,000 59,000 47,000 45,000 83,000
113,000 140,000 42,000 83,000 49,000
Process A: The fatigue fracture cycle of unnotched specimen. Process B: The fatigue fracture cycle of the specimen that was subjected to magnetic
field of 800 G up to 30% of the total fatigue life of the unnotched specimen. Process C: The fatigue fracture cycle of the specimen that was subjected
to magnetic field of 1300 G up to 30% of the total fatigue life of the unnotched specimen. Process D: The fatigue fracture cycle of the specimen that
was subjected to magnetic field of 800 G between 30% and 60% of the total fatigue life of the unnotched specimen. Process E: The fatigue fracture
cycle of the specimen that was subjected to magnetic field of 800 G up to fracture the unnotched specimen.
 A. Çelik et al. / Materials and Design 26 (2005) 700–704 703

Table 3

7.62
5.2
The results of fatigue life for notched specimens
Stress levels (MPa) Processes
F G

19.5 430 65,000 85,000

88.9÷250 19.5
73,000 58,000
62,000 60,000
87.3125
400 12,500 108,000
Fig. 2. Rotating bending test specimen, dimensions are in mm units. 123,000 103,000
153,000 144,000
370 402,000 370,000
750 349,000 307,000
Alternating stress, MPa

Process A
Process B
510,000 430,000
700
Process C
340 728,000 610,000
Process D
650 555,000 422,000
C 647,000 458,000
600 B
310 1,258,000 1,200,000
550 1375,000 1,150,000
D 1,200,000 1,020,000
A
500
Process F: The fatigue fracture cycle of notched specimen. Process G:
1,0E+04 1,0E+05 1,0E+06 1,0E+07
The fatigue fracture cycle of the specimen that was subjected to
Cycles to failure magnetic field of 800 G up to 30% of the total fatigue life of the
notched specimen.
Fig. 3. S–N curves of fatigue life for unnotched specimens.

treating process assists the dislocation motion [11]. metal, it may cause over heating and be detrimental
Therefore, time of formation of slip bands prolongs for fatigue life. In the process E, magnetic field was
and fatigue crack initiation delays and fatigue life applied to the specimens from the beginning of fatigue
improves. test up to occur fatigue fracture for 670 and 710 MPa
A considerable enhancement in fatigue life because stress levels. Test results indicate that applied continu-
of increasing of magnetic field intensity has been ob- ous magnetic field has a negative effect on fatigue life.
served when the process B and C compared. It is The cause of that may be softening of the specimens
thought that when the magnetization of metal reaches due to continuous movement of dislocations and pro-
its saturated value, increase in fatigue life will run out. ducing over heat. In addition, the unnotched speci-
If applied magnetic field exceeds saturation point of mens were subjected to 800 G of magnetic field up

Fig. 4. AFM image of magnetic domains occured by applying magnetic field of 800 G.
704 A. Çelik et al. / Materials and Design 26 (2005) 700–704

450  If magnetic field was applied to 100% of fatigue frac-

Alternating stress, MPa

Process F
Process G
ture cycle of the untreated specimens, the fatigue life
400 decreased due to over heating.
 It was determined that the fatigue life approximately
350 improved 20%, when magnetic field intensity was
increased.
300
G
F  It was observed that when notched specimens were
subjected to magnetic field, any improvement was
250
1,0E+04 1,0E+05 1,0E+06 1,0E+07
not obtained in the fatigue life.
Cycles to failure

Fig. 5. S–N curves of fatigue life for notched specimens.

Acknowledgement
to 60% of total fatigue life at 630 MPa. While it was
obtained a decreasing in fatigue life according to proc- This work has been financially supported by the Re-
ess B, it was obtained improvement according to proc- search Fund of Ataturk University (Project No.: 2003/
ess D. 34).
For the specimen subjected magnetic field up to 30–
60% of the fatigue fracture cycle of the untreated speci-
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