Fatigue and Fracture of Crystalline Metal Structures

A special issue of Crystals (ISSN 2073-4352). This special issue belongs to the section "Crystalline Metals and Alloys".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 June 2025 | Viewed by 3026

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Institute of Mechanics Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
Interests: very-high-cycle fatigue; crack initiation and growth; metallic materials; microstructure design and characterization; fracture and damage mechanics; elasto-plasto dynamics; wave propagation and scattering; stress concentration

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

Fatigue and fracture cause massive losses to the economy, about 4% GDP (gross domestic product). Crystalline metal structures are intensively developed by materials science and extensively used in many applications, such as mechanical, civil, and aerospace engineering.

This Special Issue (SI) aims to publish high-quality, original papers that provide new data, fatigue and fracture phenomena and insights into the behaviors, processes, and mechanisms dominating fatigue and fracture of metallic materials with crystal structures in theoretical formulations, numerical simulations, physical and machine learning based models, laboratorial experiments and case studies.

Fatigue and fracture are highly dependent on the microstructure bearing the external loads, including monotonic, cyclic, shock, and waves. Thus, microstructure investigations associated with the damage accumulation and elastoplastic deformations are strongly recommended, including but not limited to the following: characterizations of XRD (X-ray diffraction), SEM (scanning electron microscopy), TEM (transmission electron microscopy), FIB (focused ion beam) and EBSD (electron backscatter diffraction) and modeling of CALPHAD (computer coupling of phase diagrams and thermochemistry), FEM (finite element method), crystal plasticity and MD (molecular dynamics).

For many metallic materials, especially additively manufactured (AM) metals and alloys, non-metallic inclusions, AM defects or other inhomogeneities always have crucial roles in crack initiation and growth due to stress concentration. Contributions related to this area are very welcome. Engineering vibration is one of the most important factors of external loads, making fatigue failure a key component in civil or aerospace applications. Contributions based on the modal analysis, the measurement and/or calculation of the field of stress and strain in the vibrated structures of crystalline metallic materials are also welcome.

Dr. Xiangnan Pan
Dr. Abílio M. P. De Jesus
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • fatigue and fracture
  • fatigue regimes
  • engineering vibration
  • elastic and plastic waves
  • metals and alloys
  • additive manufacturing
  • microstructure modeling
  • microstructure characterization
  • civil engineering
  • aerospace structure

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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21 pages, 4302 KiB  
Article
Multiaxial Fatigue Lifetime Estimation Based on New Equivalent Strain Energy Damage Model under Variable Amplitude Loading
by Zhi-Qiang Tao, Xiangnan Pan, Zi-Ling Zhang, Hong Chen and Li-Xia Li
Crystals 2024, 14(9), 825; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst14090825 - 20 Sep 2024
Viewed by 872
Abstract
The largest normal stress excursion during contiguous turn time instants of the maximum torsional stress is presented as an innovative path-independent fatigue damage quantity upon the critical plane, which is further employed for characterizing fatigue damage under multiaxial loading. Via using the von [...] Read more.
The largest normal stress excursion during contiguous turn time instants of the maximum torsional stress is presented as an innovative path-independent fatigue damage quantity upon the critical plane, which is further employed for characterizing fatigue damage under multiaxial loading. Via using the von Mises equivalent stress formula, an axial stress amplitude with equivalent value is proposed, incorporating the largest torsional stress range and largest normal stress excursion upon the critical plane. The influence of non-proportional cyclic hardening is considered within the presented axial equivalent stress range. Moreover, according to proposed axial equivalent stress amplitude, an energy-based damage model is presented to estimate multiaxial fatigue lifetime upon the critical plane. In order to verify the availability of the proposed approach, the empirical results of a 7050-T7451 aluminum alloy and En15R steel are used, and the predictions indicated that estimated fatigue lives correlate with the experimentally observed fatigue results well for variable amplitude multiaxial loadings. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fatigue and Fracture of Crystalline Metal Structures)
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11 pages, 7892 KiB  
Article
Effect of Al-Ti-B-Er on the Microstructure and Properties of Ultrahigh-Strength Aluminum Alloy
by Xiao Wang, Zizhi Ying, En Hu, Juntao Ma, Xiaoqing Zhang, Tengfei Ma and Xiaohong Wang
Crystals 2024, 14(8), 695; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst14080695 - 30 Jul 2024
Viewed by 752
Abstract
To refine the grain size and improve the mechanical properties of ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloy (Al-10Zn-1.9Mg-1.6Cu-0.12Zr), the Al-Ti-B-Er grain refiner was prepared by the melt reaction method using the aluminum melt and Al + Ti + B precursor. The results exhibit that the Al-Ti-B-Er [...] Read more.
To refine the grain size and improve the mechanical properties of ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloy (Al-10Zn-1.9Mg-1.6Cu-0.12Zr), the Al-Ti-B-Er grain refiner was prepared by the melt reaction method using the aluminum melt and Al + Ti + B precursor. The results exhibit that the Al-Ti-B-Er grain refiner is mainly composed of a block TiAl3 phase, and loose agglomerated nano-sized TiB2 and Al3Er phases. The microstructure of ultrahigh-strength aluminum is significantly affected by the Al-Ti-B-Er refiner, which changes from dendrite to equiaxial grain with increasing Al-Ti-B-Er content, and the size of the eutectic phase is significantly refined. The high-efficiency refinement of Al-Ti-B-Er is due to Er promoting the uniform distribution of TiAl3 particles and the formation of loose agglomerated nano-sized TiB2 particles. The optimal addition content of Al-Ti-B-Er into ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloys is 1 wt%, whose grain size is approximately 40 µm. Additionally, the strength and ductility of ultrahigh-strength aluminum alloys are simultaneously improved by adding 1wt% Al-Ti-B-Er after the T6 treatment, reaching 756 MPa and 20%, respectively. This enhancement in strength and ductility is mainly attributed to grain refinement and the eutectic phase refinement. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fatigue and Fracture of Crystalline Metal Structures)
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Review

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23 pages, 17118 KiB  
Review
Research Viewpoint on Performance Enhancement for Very-High-Cycle Fatigue of Ti-6Al-4V Alloys via Laser-Based Powder Bed Fusion
by Chun Gao, Yang Zhang, Jingjiang Jiang, Rui Fu, Leiming Du and Xiangnan Pan
Crystals 2024, 14(9), 749; https://doi.org/10.3390/cryst14090749 - 23 Aug 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 707
Abstract
Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is a promising industrial technology that enables rapid prototyping of complex configurations. Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) is one of the most popular AM techniques for metallic materials. Until today, only a few metals and alloys are available [...] Read more.
Additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing is a promising industrial technology that enables rapid prototyping of complex configurations. Powder Bed Fusion (PBF) is one of the most popular AM techniques for metallic materials. Until today, only a few metals and alloys are available for AM, e.g., titanium alloys, the most common of which is Ti-6Al-4V. After optimization of PBF parameters, with or without post processing such as heat treatment or hot isostatic pressing, the printed titanium alloy can easily reach tensile strengths of over 1100 MPa due to the quick cooling of the AM process. However, attributed to the unique features of metallurgical defects and microstructure introduced by this AM process, their fatigue strength has been low, often less than 30% of the tensile strength, especially in very-high-cycle regimes, i.e., failure life beyond 107 cycles. Here, based on our group’s research on the very-high-cycle fatigue (VHCF) of additively manufactured (AMed) Ti-6Al-4V alloys, we have refined the basic quantities of porosity, metallurgical defects, and the AMed microstructure, summarized the main factors limiting their VHCF strengths, and suggested possible ways to improve VHCF performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Fatigue and Fracture of Crystalline Metal Structures)
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