AISI 301 stainless steel sheet

301 is an austenitic chromium-nickel stainless steel that provides high strength and good ductility when cold worked

AISI 301 stainless steel is the least alloyed of the chromium-nickel austenitic stainless steels (300 series). This results in lower austenite stability compared to the other 300 series alloys [6], and therefore demonstrates the positive effects associated with martensitic transformation to a greater extent, such as good formability [8]. Because of these characteristics, AISI 301 stainless steel sheet in full hard condition (cold rolled approximately 50%) has been used in many applications, including for springs and clamping devices such as multilayer gaskets [9].Of the fretting studies on austenitic stainless steels reported in the literature, all were in the annealed condition [10-18]. Austenitic stainless steels in the annealed condition have been found to demonstrate a 15 to 30% reduction in fatigue strength due to fretting [14, 16]. However, no reported research was located in the open literature on fretting behavior of AISI 301 in the higher-strength cold-worked condition. Because the fatigue crack growth and wear behavior are quite sensitive to the hardness of the material, the fretting behavior of material in the cold rolled condition is expected to be much different compared to the annealed condition. Increased hardness is expected to improve the wear and high cycle fatigue properties but can be detrimental to the fretting fatigue and low cycle fatigue behavior.The goal of this work is to investigate the fretting behavior of AISI 301 stainless steel sheets in full hard condition. An experimental method is developed to systematically investigate the fretting behavior of these thin specimens. The fretting damage is characterized in several ways. Fretting scars are inspected microscopically to gain knowledge about the wear behavior. Friction data logged during fretting experiments is analyzed to determine whether the running condition is partial slip, mixed slip, or gross slip [19]. The extent of the fretting damage is experimentally determined by finding the residual fatigue strength. This is done by cycling a specimen that was subjected to fretting in a servohydraulic tests system until failure. Comparing this residual fatigue life to the fatigue life of the virgin material serves as a measure of the severity of fretting damage. A crack growth methodology is used to show that fretting damage is equivalent to a small crack, which can readily grow under bulk cyclic loading resulting in a large knockdown of the fatigue strength.

AISI 301 stainless steel sheet