Low Cycle Fatigue Evaluation of Inconel 713C and Waspaloy

Completely reversed axial fatigue results are reported for Waspaloy and Inconel 713C at room temperature. Fatigue strength and ductility are evaluated using power functions of the fatigue life. The exponents and coefficients of these two equations are looked upon as four fatigue properties of the material. They appear in the equations which are developed to relate cyclic stress, plastic strain, total strain, plastic strain energy per cycle, total plastic strain energy to fracture, and fatigue life. These equations and the four fatigue properties permit the evaluation of the relative fatigue resistance of various metals at different fatigue lives when subjected to strain, stress, or plastic strain energy cycling. The “best” selection of material to resist fatigue is found to depend on the type of cycling and the desired life. At room temperature, the wrought Waspaloy is found to be more fatigue resistant than the cast Inconel 713C, particularly in resisting strain or plastic strain energy cycling in the low cycle fatigue region. For longer lives the difference in fatigue resistance between the two diminishes, especially for stress cycling. It is believed that the method of fatigue evaluation used here is generally applicable to the engineering problem of material selection to resist fatigue, and should in some cases replace methods based on conventional rotating bending fatigue tests which only evaluate the fatigue strength at long lives.