Effect of surface roughness and polishing orientation on fatigue life and fracture fatigue entropy

Abstract The effect of surface roughness and polishing orientation on fatigue life is investigated. Fully reversed bending fatigue tests are conducted on ASTM A1008 specimens having surface roughness asperities ranging from mirror finish ( R a = 0.05 μm) to coarse ( R a = 1.5 μm). Two polishing directions (i.e., orientations) are examined. For the range of roughness values tested, the results suggest that polishing orientation has a strong influence on fatigue life. Specifically, within the range of surface roughness values tested, fatigue life was found to be relatively insensitive to surface roughness asperities when the roughness orientation was parallel to the direction of surface stress but sensitive to surface roughness asperities when the orientation crossed the direction of surface stress. Results are generalized using the concept of fracture fatigue entropy (FFE). It is shown that, unlike fatigue life, FFE is independent of polishing orientation, a noteworthy result. To explain the behavior of FFE in relation to surface roughness asperities, a fatigue thermodynamics theory is presented that hypothesizes that all specimens of the same material fail at equivalent entropy levels.