Mechanical Design and Production Department

4th Year 2022-2023

MDP 4001

Material Technology and Production Lab

Machine Surface Roughness Effect on the Material Life for

the Rotating Bending Fatigue

Name: Abdallah Refate Ahmed Mohamed Hammam

B.N: 19
Submitted to: DR./ Sherif Aly
Contents
Procedure ............................................................................................................................................... 3
Precautions ............................................................................................................................................ 3
Bending Fatigue test overview ............................................................................................................. 3
Test Results ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Comments .......................................................................................................................................... 4

2
Procedure

• Prepare 4 specimens from the same alloy, same dimensions, and with different
degrees of surface roughness.
• Measure the surface roughness parameter (Ra) for each specimen by using the
Surtronic 3P device.
• Munt the specimen on the rotating bending machine and fix it in the spindle.
• Turn on the oil pump.
• Apply the bending load and select the rotating speed.
• After checking the machine precautions, power it up and start the stopwatch to count
the time to failure.
• Measure the fatigue life for each specimen.
• Plot fatigue life versus Ra.

Precautions

• Make sure that the specimen is well fixed in the spindle.

• Make sure that the middle lock is closed on the specimen, so it won’t fly out after the
test end.
• Make the counter on zero before starting the test.

Bending Fatigue test overview

The test is done by exposing a standard prepared specimen to a fully reversed cyclic load by
applying a constant load and rotate the specimen using the standard rotating bending machine
as shown in fig. (1), so each half of the specimen expose tension then compression and so on
until the fracture occurred.
The fracture in the specimen starts at a specific point as a small crack then it propagates in
shape of benchmarks until it reaches a limit at which brittle or ductile fracture occur as shown
in fig. (2)

Fig.1 Standard rotating bending machine Fig.2 Fatigue fracture

3
Test Results

Surface roughness (Ra) (μm) Average Surface Roughness Fatigue life

(Ra) (μm)
3, 3.6, 3.9 3.5 19500
5.5, 5.8, 5.4 5.57 9700
10.7, 10.8, 11 10.83 5500
16.5, 15.3, 14.6 15.47 1500
Table.1 Surface roughness readings and Fatigue life for each specimen

Fatigue life versus Ra

18
16
14
12
Ra (μm)

10
8
6
4
2
0
0 5000 10000 15000 20000 25000
Fatigue life

Comments
It’s shown that at lower surface roughness (smoother surface) the fatigue life increased, as the
higher surface roughness of a component may cause stress concentration areas or even initial
cracks which lead the specimen to a quicker fracture.