Fatigue fracture behavior of Mg-Zn-Y alloys

Recently, Mg-Zn-Y alloys with superior performance, which have a long period stacking order (LPSO) phase, have been developed. Therefore, it is important to understand fundamental fatigue properties in such materials. In this study, the fatigue fracture behavior of the Mg96Zn2Y2 alloy has been investigated with a plain bending testing machine, which was originally developed for thin sheet specimen at room temperature and 523K. One end of the sheet specimen is fixed at a voice coil of the loudspeaker and the other end is set free. A bending mode resonance occurs in the specimen due to forced vibration at the fixed end. To estimate stress amplitude of bending, deflections at the free end of the specimen oscillating at a frequency of about 200 similar to 500Hz was measured by a laser displacement gauge. For comparison, AZ31B alloy also has been investigated. S-N curve for the Mg96Zn2Y2 alloy was obtained using a stress ratio of R = -1, and the fatigue strengths were estimated as 200MPa at room temperature and 120MPa at 523K at 10(6)similar to 10(7) cycles. These values correspond to about 50% of 0.2% proof strengths of the Mg96Zn2Y2 alloy. Two types of fatigue surface were observed in the Mg96Zn2Y2 alloy. One was striation-like-pattern and the other was relatively flat surface. Striation-like-pattern was similar to fatigue surface of AZ31B. Therefore, these two types of fatigue surface correspond to crack passing through alpha-Mg phase and LPSO phase, respectively. The feature of fracture surface at 523K was almost the same as that at room temperature.