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Article history:
Received 26 November 2007
Received in revised form 8 April 2008
Accepted 12 May 2008
Available online 17 May 2008
Keywords:
Particulate metalmatrix composite
Friction stir welding
Fatigue crack growth
Crack closure
a b s t r a c t
This work is devoted to the analysis of fatigue crack propagation resistance of particulate metal-matrix
composites butt joints obtained by friction stir welding. Two different aluminum alloy matrices reinforced with alumina particles were examined. Tests were conducted on both parent material and welded
joint for comparison. Fatigue crack propagation was carried out both within the weld nugget and in the
thermo-mechanically altered zone at the side of the weld. The comparison between parent material and
joint showed that the welding process affects fracture toughness and fatigue crack growth rate differently
depending on the material. The analysis of crack path roughness helped to understand those differences
in the fatigue crack growth rate. Therefore, roughness-induced crack closure arguments have been introduced to discuss data obtained under different testing conditions (parent material/joint, R-ratio, crack
location, crack growth regime). Both the classical Elbers approach and more recent approaches based
on partial crack closure concept (adjusted compliance ratio, ACR, and 2/p methods) were considered.
The results showed that, using partial crack closure, all of the data collapse within a reasonable
scatterband.
2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
The interest of automotive, railway, sporting goods, shipbuilding, aerospace and electronics, industries on metal matrix composites produced an expected increase of the market from its
estimated 2005 level of 3.6 million kg to 4.9 million kg by 2010,
with an average annual growth rate of 6.3% [1].
Particulate metalmatrix composites (PMMCs) are an attractive,
alternative solution to short or long ber-reinforced MMCs especially regarding their lower cost and quasi-isotropic mechanical response [2]. Commonly, Al-, Ti- or Mg-alloys are the matrix
materials while high modulus ceramics, such as Al2O3 and SiC,
are the reinforcement materials in form of particles. The main
improvements given by PMMCs with respect to the matrix alone
are higher stiffness, mechanical and wear resistance [2,3].
The very specic and high-tech usage of PMMC requires in principle the knowledge of standard mechanical properties such as
tensile or fatigue strength, as well as fracture toughness and fatigue crack growth (FCG) properties to guarantee a reliable in-service durability. Unfortunately, due to their dual-phase nature, the
strength of PMMCs is the result of several factors, such as type, size
distribution and shape of particles and processing technique. The
fracture toughness of a PMMC is generally lower than the respec* Corresponding author. Tel.: +39 0521 905885; fax. +39 0521 905705.
E-mail address: alessandro.pirondi@unipr.it (A. Pirondi).
0142-1123/$ - see front matter 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2008.05.003
112
The underlying assumption is a rigid contact between crack surfaces and, therefore, for K < Kopen the crack tip is fully shielded. From
the experimental point of view, Kopen is determined from the deviation in the linearity of a load vs. opening curve (see for example
[43]).
The anticipated contact of the crack surfaces is mainly related to
the residual plastic deformation (plasticity-induced crack closure,
PICC) in the steady-state (Paris) FCG regime, while at threshold closure is related mainly to microstructural asperities of the fracture
surfaces (roughness-induced crack closure, RICC) or by oxide layers
(oxide-induced crack closure, OICC) that may develop on the fracture surfaces. Anyway, the occurrence of closure due to such mechanisms leads to some criticism about the assumption of a rigid,
complete contact of crack surfaces [44]:
the fatigue crack surface may not interfere at the very tip, but
only at some distance behind that;
PICC can be hardly invoked under plane strain condition,
because plasticity is more limited than under plane stress and
therefore there is little material sticking off of the crack surface;
crack closure due to crack face interference can occur by asperities, oxide layers, etc. but such contributions to crack tip stresses are normally small and are important only in threshold
region.
If one considers instead a compliant crack wake [44] the load
transfer between crack faces is progressive and therefore there is
a local strain contribution even below Kopen. This means that the
value of Kopen and, in turn, of DKeff cannot be simply determined
at point of deviation from linearity of the loaddisplacementcurve.
Alternative methods to evaluate DKeff were proposed in [44,45].
The adjusted compliance ratio (ACR) model [44] is based on the
hypothesis of a crack driving force proportional to the strain magnitude. A correction is applied to the applied DK is made on the basis of the ratio of the measured strain range to ideally closure-free
one, see Fig. 2. DKeff is then obtained as
113
DK eff DK ACR
ACR
Cs Ci
C0 Ci
2bis
At very low FCG rates, it is known that the most important closure mechanisms are RICC and OICC, which may cause contact not
immediately at the crack tip but someway behind that, Fig. 3a.
According to this, a model was proposed in [45] that corresponds
to the presence of a layer of thickness 2h inserted between crack
faces at a given distance, d, from the crack tip. The evaluation of
the crack driving force for this situation leads to
K max
2
2
K min < DK eff < K max K open
K open 1
It can be noticed that DKeff is independent from h and for low Rratios D Keff Kmax (2/p). Kopen. The two models, even though
quite different in the formulation, rely on the same physical
assumption, that is the crack does not always close completely.
Fig. 3. (a) Model of the partial crack closure mechanism; (b) parameter denition
[45].
Table 1
Strength of the composites under test compared with the metalmatrices alone
Material
E (MPa)
ry (MPa)
ru (MPa)
AA6061
W6A20A
AA7005
W7A10A
68,000
97,000
72,000
84,000
330
360
325
345
380
375
375
395
18
4
12
7
Fig. 4. Sketch of specimens extraction from welded plates (not in scale). Measures
are given in mm.
114
Fig. 5. Outline of residual stress measurement locations by X-ray diffraction on W6A20 FSW joint; (a) longitudinal stress on weld top side, measured on the specimen axis;
(b) longitudinal stress on weld bottom side, measured on the specimen axis; (c) transverse stress on weld top side, measured on the weld axis and at its lateral sides L and R;
(d) transverse stress on weld bottom side, measured on the weld axis.
the top to the bottom side of the weld, i.e. through the specimen
thickness. However, the value of stress goes from
64.7 6.2 MPa (transverse residual stress rT on the weld axis,
close to the specimen side) to 51.3 3.0 MPa (longitudinal residual
stress rL on the weld axis, close to the HAZ). These values are signicantly lower than other results reported in the literature, such
as in [33]. Such low residual stresses are probably the result of
specimen extraction from the plates with consequent stress relaxation, further promoted by the small specimen size. For this reason,
they have not been accounted for in the analysis at this stage.
Fracture and FCG tests were then carried out on a MTS servohydraulic machine. FCG tests were performed at R = Kmin/Kmax
equal to 0.1 and 0.5, respectively. The crack was placed along the
weld line (WL), that is across the weld nugget, or at the weld side
(WS) in the TMAZ (see Fig. 4). FCG tests were run in lab air at a frequency of 10 Hz, under constant load amplitude (DK-increasing) or
with continuous load-shedding (DK-decreasing). The experiments
were conducted in agreement with ASTM E647standard [43]. The
experimental setup is outlined in Fig. 6.
The crack propagation was monitored from the specimen compliance using a strain gage placed on the back face of the specimen.
In this technique, a strain gage is glued to the back face of the specimen and a compliance C is evaluated by linear least squares tting
of (eW) vs. load (P) (e back-face strain). The crack length ratio a/W
is calculated then by a polynomial relationship:
a
a0 a1 u a2 u2 a3 u3 a4 u4 a5 u5
W
as a function of
1
p
BEC
prole-grid intersections, Pi, along a given length, L. The method is more deeply described in [47]. The roughness Rv can then be
expressed as
Rv
yX
Pi
L
115
SF
Fig. 7. (a) Micrograph of the W6A20A FSW joint cross section; (b) detail of the
microstructure at the nugget border.
4p A
P2
Fig. 8. Microstructure of W6A20A: (a) parent PMMC and (b) FSW nugget. Etched with 85 ml distilled water + 5%HF + 10%H2SO4 solution.
116
Table 2
Summary of microstructural parameters of PMMCs
Average
particle area
(lm2)
Average particle
major axis (lm)
Average
particle shape
factor
Average
grain size
(lm)
W6A20A
Unwelded
FSW Nugget
102.1
69.3
10.8
7.9
0.60
0.64
24.9
12.8
W7A10A
Unwelded
FSW Nugget
120.4
73.7
15.6
9.0
0.61
0.63
Position
Fig. 9. Frequency distribution of (a, c) particle area and (b, d) particle shape factor in parent material and FSW nugget of W6A20A and W7A10A.
117
Fig. 10. Fracture toughness of the FSW joints compared with the base material.
metal matrix and a larger number of stress raisers. Therefore plastic deformation within the matrix is more constrained than in the
parent material, see Fig. 8a, limiting the fracture toughness. This
does not occur in the case of W7A10A, where the volume fraction
of particle is half the one of W6A20A.
5.2. Fatigue crack growth
Two typical crack paths recorded during FCG tests are illustrated in Fig. 11, for (a) W6A20A and (b) W7A10A (parent material). The rst image depicts a typical branching mechanism, due
to crack deviance caused by some big reinforce particle or cluster
of particles; the second image is a clear example of RICC in which
a premature contact of the crack surfaces is due to a alumina particle. These aspects allow a deeper analysis and elaboration of data
points under the light of crack closure arguments, see Section 6.
The results of W6A20A are reported in Fig. 12. The two crack
positions, WL and WS, show a very similar FCG rate. Furthermore,
they both fall within the 95% condence limits of the base PMMC
mean behavior. The FSW joint exhibit even a higher FCG strength
at low crack growth rates (near-threshold regime), that can be
attributed to a higher crack shielding effect related to the ner
microstructure of the joint with respect to the parent material.
The substantiation of the relationship between microstructural
changes due to FSW and FCG rate has been given by the examina-
Fig. 12. FCG rate of W6A20A parent material and FSW joint.
Fig. 11. Roughness induced crack closure in PMMC: (a) crack branching in W6A20A; (b) particle interaction in W7A10A.
118
Table 3
Crack surface roughness (Rv) at different regimes of fatigue crack propagation
Material
Crack
location
Rv (lm) (near-threshold
regime)
Rv (lm) (Paris
regime)
W6A20A
Base PMMC
FSW (WL)
FSW (WS)
0.1
0.1
0.1
0.22
0.41
0.50
0.51
0.48
0.64
W7A10A
Base PMMC
FSW (WL)
0.1
0.1
0.86
0.23
1.21
0.51
Fig. 13. FCG rate of W7A10A parent material and FSW joint.
Also in the case of W7A10A the two crack positions, WL and WS,
show a very similar FCG rate (Fig. 13) and fall almost completely
within the 95% condence limits of the parent PMMC mean value.
The higher value of crack closure in a material with higher particle content with respect to a material with a lower particle content enforces the idea that roughness-induced crack closure is a
prominent mechanism in this case.
The result of the application of crack closure models to selected
experiments is shown in Figs. 15 and 16 in the case of the parent
materials. Concerning W6A20A (Fig. 15), all of the three models
work quite efciently; the best approximation is obtained globally
with the 2/p method while the Elbers method at low FCG rates
probably overestimates the closure (data at R = 0.1 lying above
Fig. 14. Graphs of DKeff vs. Kmax (recorded according to the method of [43]): (a) W6A20A and (b) W7A10A FSW joint. The lines of equation DKeff = Kmax (1 R) represent a
closure-free propagation.
Fig. 15. FCG rate of W6A20A corrected for crack closure (parent material).
Fig. 16. FCG rate of W7A10A corrected for crack closure (parent material).
Fig. 17. FCG rate of parent materials and FSW joints corrected for crack closure.
119
120
R = 0.5). In the case of W7A10A (Fig. 16), the models differ more
markedly and it is evident that the quantitatively and qualitatively
better correction comes again from the 2/p method.
The same analysis conducted on FSW joint led to the same qualitative result, that is the best agreement between data at different
R-ratios is obtained, for both PMMCs, using 2/p partial crack closure evaluation method.
The comparison of parent material and FSW joint in terms of
DKeff has been therefore carried out using only 2/p partial crack
closure evaluation method, as shown in Fig. 17. In the case of
W7A10A, graph on the right, the data in the intermediate to low
crack growth rate fall together irrespective of R-ratio and starter
crack position. Also in the case of W6A20A the FCG data at the
two different R-ratios and crack position come close to each other
when plotted in terms of DKeff, although slightly different trends
may be identied between R = 0.5 and R = 0.1.
7. Conclusions
This work was devoted to the experimental evaluation and
analysis of fracture toughness and FCG behavior of FSW butt joints
of two PMMCs, namely 6061 aluminum alloy with 20 vol.% of Al2O3
(W6A20A) and 7005 aluminum alloy with 10 vol.% of Al2O3
(W7A10A). These properties were compared with the ones of the
base PMMCs. Differences can be related to the interaction between
the joining process and the microstructure. In particular:
the fracture toughness of the FSW joint is about 25% lower than
the parent material in the case of W6A20A, while it is 1020%
higher in the case of W7A10A: this is because of the embrittlement effect due to the particle reinforcement;
the inuence of FSW joining on FCG strength, in particular at
near-threshold rates, is the opposite as for the fracture toughness, i.e. crack propagation rate is lower than in the parent
material in the case of W6A20A, while it is higher in the case
of W7A10A.
The explanation of this behavior rate has been given by examining crack path roughness, Rv. The difference in Rvs between base
PMMC and FSW joint at low crack growth rates is attributed to the
competition between two effects: (i) the grain renement due to
dynamic re-crystallization and (ii) the particle fragmentation due
to stirring. With ner grains, Stage II (duplex slip) type of crack
propagation in the metal-matrix is more likely to occur even at
low growth rates leading to a lower Rv. Only in the case of a high
particle content, as in the case of W6A20A, this is compensated
by the higher number of crack deections caused by fragmented
particles, that increases Rv.
The discussion of experimental data with the help of different
closure evaluation methods sorted the 2/p method as the one
which gave the most efcient description of the differences among
parent material and joint, loading conditions and crack location.
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge Dr. L.M. Volpone, formerly at
Fincantieri, Genoa (I), and Dr. J. Dos Santos, GKSS Research Centre,
Geesthacht (D), for supplying the joints, Prof. R. Konecna, University of Zilina (SK), for the metallographic images, and Prof. M. Guagliano, Polytechnic of Milan, Milan (I), for residual stresses
evaluation.
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