Fatigue behaviour of 42CrMo4 steel under contact loading

The presented paper describes the experimental determination of fatigue crack growth parameters for high strength low-alloy steel 42CrMo4. The experiments were performed according to the ASTM E647 standard and the parameters of the Paris equation (C and m) were determined. Test specimens were subjected to impulsive cyclic tensile loading on a testing machine. During that the fatigue crack propagation was monitored as a function of elapsed fatigue cycles. Taking these experimental results into account the fatigue crack growth rates at different stress-intensity factor ranges was determined. To consider the variable material properties of the slewing bearing ring trough depth, specimens of different hardnesses were tested. Beside the experimental result a 2D contact fatigue crack propagation model is also presented. This model can be used for the simulation of surface initiated contact fatigue crack propagation on the roller slewing bearing's raceway. As a computational example the results of a finite element method contact fatigue crack propagation simulation are presented. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.