Fatigue crack nucleation and propagation at clustered metallic carbides in M50 bearing steel

Abstract This paper focuses on the crack nucleation and crack propagation induced by a cluster of carbides. The morphology of the carbides is extracted from scanning electron microscope images of M50 bearing steel. Subsequently, a continuum damage accumulation model is incorporated into the Voronoi finite element model to investigate the damage evolution in the material. It can be observed that nearly all the micro-cracks nucleate on the boundary of the carbide and propagate through the bearing material matrix around those carbides until they become large enough to coalesce to failure. With the increasing of friction coefficient, cracks gradually grow to the contact surface. The result also shows that the carbides deeper than a certain depth are not harmful to the material.