from the conferences organized by TANGER Ltd.
Although high-strength structural steels deliver excellent strength-to-weight ratios, their fatigue reliability drops sharply once corrosion pits develop. In this study, S460 specimens were corroded in controlled salt spray cycles. Pit geometry was measured using X-ray microCT and rotating bending tests were performed to establish S–N curves. A plane-strain finite-element model was used to convert pit depth into local stress-concentration factors, confirming that deeper pits, rather than nominal yield strength, govern endurance loss. The same corrosion and testing protocol were repeated on S690, and these data will be used to complete a grade-to-grade comparison in future work. The results highlight the need for early surface protection or fatigue design reductions that explicitly account for pit depth.
Keywords: Corrosion fatigue, high-strength steel, pit depth, stress concentration, finite-element modelling© This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.