Cyclic thermo-mechanical stress, strain and continuum damage behaviors in light alloys during fatigue lifetime considering heat treatment effect

Abstract In this article, thermo-mechanical fatigue behaviors in light alloys have been investigated to find the effect of heat treatments. For this objective, thermo-mechanical fatigue tests were performed on the A356.0 aluminum alloy and the AZE911 magnesium alloy, with and without typical T6 heat treatments. Obtained results demonstrated no significant difference in thermo-mechanical fatigue lifetime of the A356.0 alloy between non-heat-treated and heat-treated test specimens at 250 °C of the maximum temperature, which was attributed to the over-ageing phenomenon. As a consequence, this low effect showed that the heat treatment could be eliminated for cylinder heads. However, the thermo-mechanical fatigue lifetime of the AZE911 alloy was significantly affected by the heat treatment. The explanation for the mentioned behavior could be found in the material micro-structure, which was affected by dissolving the brittle intermetallic phase in the matrix of the AZE911 alloy. However, the magnesium alloy still requires more improvements in the fatigue lifetime for a possible substitution in cylinder heads. Continuum damage behaviors showed that higher damage values occurred in the aluminum alloy, in comparison to the magnesium alloy, both for heat-treated and non-heat-treated specimens.