Short crack propagation in eutectoid steel wires

Recent studies showed that fatigue failure of high-strength eutectoid steel wires originates from surface flaws caused by the cold-drawing process. In this research we studied the short crack problem and analysed microcrack propagation and threshold. The study led to a description of the fatigue process from the characteristic nucleation sites of cold-drawn wires. The adoption of an EPFM crack propagation model allowed us to obtain fatigue life prediction from the experimental population of defects. Copyright (C) 1996.