Surface roughness-informed fatigue life prediction of L-PBF Hastelloy X at elevated temperature

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical model to predict the fatigue life of L-PBF Hastelloy X components at high temperature, considering surface roughness effects, validated through extensive experimental testing.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analytical methodology that links surface valley characteristics to fatigue life prediction for additively manufactured metals.

Findings

Rougher surfaces fail earlier due to valley-induced notch effects.

The model accurately predicts fatigue life across different strain loadings.

Surface roughness significantly influences fatigue performance at elevated temperatures.

Abstract

Additive manufacturing, especially laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF), is widely used for fabricating metal parts with intricate geometries. However, parts produced via L-PBF suffer from varied surface roughness which affects the dynamic or fatigue properties. Accurate prediction of fatigue properties as a function of surface roughness is a critical requirement for qualifying L-PBF parts. In this work, an analytical methodology is put forth to predict the fatigue life of L-PBF components having heterogeneous surface roughness. Thirty-six Hastelloy X specimens are printed using L-PBF followed by industry-standard heat treatment procedures. Half of these specimens are built with as-printed gauge sections and the other half is printed as cylinders from which fatigue specimens are extracted via machining. Specimens are printed in a vertical orientation and an orientation 30 degree from the vertical axis. The surface roughness of the specimens is measured using computed tomography and parameters such as the maximum valley depth are used to build an extreme value distribution. Fatigue testing is conducted at an isothermal condition of 500-degree F. It is observed that the rough specimens fail much earlier compared to the machined specimens due to the deep valleys present on the surfaces of the former ones. The valleys act as notches leading to high strain localization. Following this observation, a functional relationship is formulated analytically that considers surface valleys as notches and correlates the strain localization around those notches with fatigue life, using the Coffin-Manson-Basquin and Ramberg-Osgood equation. In conclusion, the proposed analytical model successfully predicts the fatigue life of L-PBF specimens at an elevated temperature undergoing different strain loadings.