The Morphology of Rolling Contact Fatigue Fracture of Hardened Steels

Rolling Contact Fatigue(RCF) is a cumulative damage phenomenon when metals are subjected to repeated contact stresses. The fomation of pitting on the contact surface is the result of the rolling contact fatigue. The morphologies of rolling contact fatigue fracture of the har- dened steels (86CrHoV7, 42CrMo) show that strong resemblance in fractuye mechanisms exists between rolling contact fatigue and uni-axial fatigue. Since fatigue striations are hardly observed in hardened steels under uni-axial fatigue, it is interesting to note that the state of stress in rolling contact fatigue is more favor- able to ductile fractures than in uni-axial fatigue.