Fatigue behavior of reactor pressure vessel steels

High-cycle fatigue tests have been conducted on reactor pressure vessel steels, SA533-B1, with four levels of sulfur contents at room temperature. The applied stress versus fatigue life cycle (S-N) curves were developed at load ratios, R, of 0.2 and 0.8. At a load ratio of 0.2, the fatigue limit for SA533-B1 steels with sulfur contents less than 0.015 wt % is around 650 MPa, which is slightly higher than that with sulfur contents higher than 0.027 wt %. At a load ratio of 0.8, there were no fatigue indications on the fracture surface. In some fatigue-tested specimens, specifically those with higher sulfur content levels, fatigue cracks were observed to initiate around the inclusions. A digital video camera was used to record the entire fatigue process, and the results demonstrated that the crack initiation period dominated more than 80% of the total fatigue life. The fatigue-tested specimen surface had been thoroughly examined using optical and scanning electron microscopy. Apparent distinctions were observed between the neighborhood of the crack initiation site and the rest of the specimen surface. A great number of precipitates were found distributed along the sub-grain boundary using transmission electron microscopy. There is no or little change of the morphology of precipitates before and after fatigue tests. The mis-orientation between two neighboring sub-grains ranges from 1 degrees to 5 degrees. The effects of the applied maximum stress, precipitate distribution, and fatigue cycle on the mis-orientation of the sub-grain boundary will be discussed in this paper.