Cyclic Hardening and Fatigue Damage Features of 51CrV4 Steel for the Crossing Nose Design

A crossing nose is a component of railway infrastructure subject to very severe loading conditions. Depending on the severity of these loads, the occurrence of structural fatigue, severe plastic deformation, or rolling fatigue may occur. Under fatigue conditions with high plastic deformation, cyclic plasticity approaches, together with local plasticity models, become more viable for mechanical design. In this work, the fatigue behavior in strain-controlled conditions of 51CrV4 steel, applicable to the crossing nose component, was evaluated. In this investigation, both strain-life and energy-life approaches were considered for fatigue prediction analysis. The results were considered through obtaining a Ramberg-Osgood cyclic elasto-plastic curve. Since this component is subject to cyclic loading, even if spaced in time, the isotropic and kinematic cyclic hardening behavior of the Chaboche model was subsequently analyzed, considering a comparative approach between experimental data and the FEM. As a result, the material properties and finite element model parameters presented in this work can contribute to the enrichment of the literature on strain-life fatigue and cyclic plasticity, and they could be applied in mechanical designs with 51CrV4 steel components or used in other future analyses.