How surface damage removal affects fatigue life

Abstract

The effect of the removal of work hardened surface layers from specimens of 2024-T4 aluminum alloy and AISI-4130 steel on their fatigue lives has been investigated. Specimens were fatigued at selected stress levels for a given number of cycles, and the surface layer was removed followed by subsequent fatigue cycling. Results confirm that when a material is subjected to fatigue loading, damage accumulates in the surface layers in the form of work hardening. Removal of the surface layer brings the specimen back to its pre-fatigued condition.