Evaluation of fatigue properties of EN31 steel heat treated using biodegradable gingili oil

Abstract

Rotating bending fatigue is the most commonly encountered loading in most machines and machine tools. At the same time, modern literature in this area is very little. EN31 steel is a steel which is commonly used in load bearing applications which encounters fatigue loading. Further, studies on heat treated EN31 steel to improve fatigue strength is hardly reported. This paper takes this rare issue further ahead by using bio-degradable gingili oil to heat treat EN31 steel for fatigue applications. This paper reports the results of rotating bending fatigue study of EN31 steel. Fatigue tests were conducted for three conditions a) Untreated, b) Heat treated with water, and c) Heat treated with gingili oil, with cantilever loads ranging from 30% to 90% using double sided rotating bending fatigue testing machine. It is seen that EN31 steel heat treated using gingili oil has far superior fatigue properties than water treated and untreated ones, with gingili oil quenched specimen have ∼10 times more fatigue life than water quenched specimen and ∼100 times more than unquenched specimens when lower bending stresses are involved.