Characterization of microstructural damage due to low-cycle fatigue by EBSD observation

Electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) in conjunction with scanning electron microscopy was used to assess the damage due to cyclic or uniform strain. Samples of Type 316 stainless steel after fatigue and tensile tests were prepared for EBSD observation and the misorientation angle between neighboring points (local misorientation) was evaluated. It was shown that the local misorientation developed due to the cyclic and uniform strain and that its spatial distribution was not uniform. In fatigue samples, the area of large local misorientation tended to form clusters, whereas it localized to the grain boundaries in the tensile samples, and the magnitude of local misorientation and the degree of the localization increased with the strain amplitude. The degree of localization was quantified via statistical processing of the measured data. It was also shown that the source of damage (cyclic or uniform strain) and the loading direction could be deduced from the EBSD observations of the damaged sample.