An Electrical Method for Failure Prediction in Ductile Machine Elements at Elevated Temperatures

Abstract

This paper provides the designer with an electrical method for failure prediction in ductile machine elements operating at elevated temperatures from room through the creep range. The law of conservation of energy, electrical considerations, and electrical properties are employed to result in a formulation. The formulation enables the designer to obtain, or verify, and then employ the critical stress value he requires in the design of a particular machine element operating at a given elevated temperature. It is shown that this critical stress value may be calculated simply by knowing the electrical resistivity value at the operating temperature, and the critical stress and electrical resistivity values at a datum (room) temperature. Specific applications are taken for various categories of steels with very good agreement between the theory and experimental data. The formulation is deemed to be applicable to other ductile metals as well.