Issue 43

B. Saadouki et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 43 (2018) 133-145; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.43.10 133 Characterization of uniaxial fatigue behavior of precipitate strengthened Cu-Ni-Si alloy (SICLANIC ® ) B. Saadouki, M. Elghorba Laboratory of Control and Mechanical Characterization of Materials and Structures, National Higher School of Electricity and Mechanics. Casablanca, Morocco. bouchra.saadouki@gmail.com PH. Pelca Lebronze alloys – Bornel, 11, rue Ménillet - 60540 Bornel – France T. Sapanathan, M. Rachik Sorbonne Universités, Université de Technologie de Compiègne, Laboratoire Roberval, CNRS UMR - 7337, Centre de Recherche Royallieu, CS 60319, 60203 Compiègne Cedex, France A BSTRACT . Fatigue tests were conducted on cylindrical bars specimens to understand the fatigue behavior of SICLANIC ® . Although it displays good resistance in monotonic tension, this material weakens and shows a softening in repeated solicitation. This has been verified through a SEM observation, the Cu-Ni-Si alloy presents transgranular failure by cleavage. The Manson- Coffin diagram exhibited the plastic deformation accommodation. The plastic deformation becomes periodic and decreases progressively as the cycle number increases. The approximations of Manson Coffin give fatigue parameters values which are in good agreement with the experience. K EYWORDS . Fatigue; Copper alloy; S-N curve; Softening; Fracture. Citation: Saadouki, B., Elghorba, M., Pelca, PH., Sapanathan, T., Rachik, M., Characterization of uniaxial fatigue behavior of precipitate strengthened Cu-Ni-Si alloy (SICLANIC®), Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 43 (2018) 133-145. Received: 22.09.2017 Accepted: 18.10.2017 Published: 01.01.2018 Copyright: © 2018 This is an open access article under the terms of the CC-BY 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. I NTRODUCTION t present, increasing demand for copper and copper alloys leads to the all-time high price of copper. Copper is widely used in electrical, electronic and thermal applications. Particularly, in an application where the high conductivity of copper is required, one should choose a copper alloy with higher percentage of copper, while there is a compromise required with the mechanical properties of the alloy. Hence, recent developments of copper alloys mainly focus on this issue and adapt to various strengthening mechanisms, such as precipitation hardening. Precipitates hardened copper alloys contain additive elements in small quantities that improves the mechanical characteristics by forming precipitates, without greatly altering their electrical conductivity [1]. The mechanical strength of these alloys is improved by precipitation of the secondary phase particles during the quenching and tempering heat treatment processes [2-4]. Thus, A