Search

The damage evolution induced by three types of carbides in M50 bearing steel is studied in this paper. Stress distribution in the micro-domain is initially obtained to calculate the damage accumulation of the elements. Subsequently, the process of the butterfly generation is simulated. It can be seen that the butterfly wings are generated at the sites where maximum stress appears. The irregular shape carbide seems to be most harmful to the bearing material. Finally, the effect of residual stress on damage evolution induced by the carbides is investigated. The result shows that higher temperature, smaller balls and ion implantation are beneficial for the strengthening of residual stress and hence damage accumulation rate is reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the crack nucleation and crack propagation induced by a cluster of carbides. The morphology of the carbides is extracted from scanning electron microscope images of M50 bearing steel. Subsequently, a continuum damage accumulation model is incorporated into the Voronoi finite element model to investigate the damage evolution in the material. It can be observed that nearly all the micro-cracks nucleate on the boundary of the carbide and propagate through the bearing material matrix around those carbides until they become large enough to coalesce to failure. With the increasing of friction coefficient, cracks gradually grow to the contact surface. The result also shows that the carbides deeper than a certain depth are not harmful to the material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]