Elevated temperature fretting fatigue of nickel based alloys
Abstract
This document details the high temperature fretting fatigue of high temperature nickel based alloys common to turbine disk and blade applications. The research consists of three area of focus: Experiments are conducted to determine quantitatively the fretting fatigue lives of advanced nickel based alloys; Analytical tools are developed and used to investigate the fretting fatigue response of the material; Fractographic analysis of the experimental results is used to improve the analytical models employed in the analysis of the experiments. Sixty three fretting fatigue experiments were conducted at 649 °C using a polycrystalline Nickel specimen in contact with directionally solidified and single crystal Nickel pads. Various influences on the fretting fatigue life are investigated. Shot peened Rene’ 95 had better fretting fatigue life compared to shot peened Rene’ 88. Shot peening produced a 2x increase in life for Rene’ 95, but only a marginal improvement in the fretting fatigue life for Rene’ 88. Minor cycles in variable amplitude loading produces significant damage to the specimen. Addition of occasional overpeaks in load produces improvements in fretting fatigue life. Contact tractions and stresses are obtained through a variety of available tools. The contact tractions can be efficiently obtained for limited geometries, while FEM can provide the contact tractions for a broader class of problems, but with the cost of increased CPU requirements. Similarly, the subsurface contact stresses can be obtained using the contact tractions as a boundary condition with either a semi-analytical FFT method or FEM. It is found that to calculate contact stresses the FFT was only marginally faster than FEM. The experimental results are combined with the analysis to produce tools that are used to design against fretting fatigue. Fractographic analysis of the fracture surface indicates the nature of the fretting fatigue crack behavior. Interrupted tests were performed to analyze the crack at intermediate lives. Fretting fatigue cracks were found to have formed in less than 10% of total fretting fatigue life. In addition to the formation of the individual fretting fatigue cracks, by 10% of the total expected fretting fatigue life, the individual fretting fatigue cracks have linked together to form a through the thickness edge crack. At some point in the experiment in between 20% to 50% of total expected fretting fatigue life, the edge crack growth retards or a corner crack accelerates. The result is a corner crack forms out of the edge crack. In many experiments this corner crack is the primary crack that leads to failure. The experimental results are combined with the analytic tools to generate usefull tools for the analysis of the fretting fatigue behavior of nickel based alloys at high temperature. This analysis tool is helpfull in the design of gas turbine engines which use nickel based alloys for the turbine blades and disks.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Farris, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Aerospace engineering|Mechanical engineering
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