A review on fatigue fracture modes of structural metallic materials in very high cycle regime

In S–N diagrams for high strength steels, experimental data in the usual surface fracture mode appears at higher stress levels with fewer loading cycles, whereas the data in the interior fracture mode tends to appear at lower stress levels with the very long fatigue life. Thus, the duplex S–N property was usually confirmed for those high strength steels in such a very high cycle regime. In the case of interior fracture mode, there can be several different types of the crack initiation with/without nonmetallic inclusion at the crack initiation site, and different crack initiation types can be found even for the surface fracture modes in the conventional fatigue life region. In the present work, the authors have attempted to review the overall feature of these fatigue fracture modes appearing at the usual life regime and the very high cycle regime.