Fatigue Failure of 51CrV4 Steel Under Rotating Bending and Tensile

Railway has proved to be a sustainable transportation alternative. This potential has caused a huge investment in the sector in recent years. However, in the freight sector, leaf spring suspensions have been suffering failures due to fatigue, causing derailments and serious losses. This work intends to provide resources to predict future structural failures due to fatigue, focusing on an analysis of fatigue in terms of the effect of loading type and applied load amplitude. It also evaluates the failure modes that occur on rotating bending and tensile fatigue testing. For this reason, a classical SN approach and SEM have been used to analyze the total fatigue life and fracture surfaces, respectively. According to the analyzed results, there is a great sensitivity to micro-notches and crack initiation on the free surface and from non-metallic inclusions.