Fatigue Behavior of Continuously Cast Plain Carbon Steels

The use of continuous cast plain carbon steels in automotive load carrying structural members has been limited because of concerns over the fatigue strengths of these steels. The concern stems from the fact that continuous cast steels generally have lower carbon (0.04 to 0.09%) compared to ingot cast steels (0.1 to 0.15%) used in such applications. The lower carbon in continuous cast steels has been assumed to lead to poorer fatigue properties. In this work, the fatigue properties of continuous cast steels at two carbon levels (0.04 and 0.09%) are reported. The results indicate that these continuous cast steels exhibit as good or better fatigue properties when compared to ingot cast low-carbon steels. In addition, the influence of prestrain-ing-and-aging on the fatigue behavior of continuous cast low carbon steels is presented.