3-D analysis of fatigue crack behaviour in a shot peened steam turbine blade material

Serial mechanical sectioning and high resolution X-ray tomography have been used to study the three-dimensional morphology of small fatigue cracks growing in a 12 Cr tempered martensitic steam turbine blade material. A range of surface conditions has been studied, namely polished and shot peened (with varying levels of intensity). In the polished (unpeened) condition, inclusions (alumina and manganese sulphide) played an important role in initiating and controlling early fatigue crack behaviour. When fatigue cracks initiated from an alumina stringer, the crack morphology was normally dominated by single stringers, which were always in the centre of the fatigue crack, indicating its primary role in initiation. Manganese sulphide inclusion groups however seemed to dominate and affect the crack path along both the surface and depth crack growth directions. The more intensely shot peened condition did not however evidence inclusion or stringer affected fatigue crack initiation or growth behaviour; sub-surface crack coalescence being clearly observed by both serial sectioning and computed tomography (CT) imaging techniques at a depth of about 150–180 μm. These sub-surface crack coalescences can be linked to both the extent of the compressive residual stress as well as the depth of the plastic deformation arising from the intense shot peening process. Shot peening appears to provide a different defect population that initiates fatigue cracks and competes with the underlying metallurgical defect populations. The most beneficial shot peening process would in this case appear to "deactivate" the original metallurgical defect population and substitute a known defect distribution from the shot peening process from which fatigue cracks grow rather slowly in the strain hardened surface layer which also contains compressive residual stresses. A benefit to fatigue life in bending, even under Low Cycle Fatigue (LCF) conditions, has been observed in these tests if a sufficiently severe shot peening condition is applied in a constrained notch configuration