Corrosion fatigue behaviour of Ti-6Al-4V in methanol environment

During the last decades, the Ti-6Al-4V titanium alloy has been widely used for several advanced applications in the aerospace, automotive and naval industry. Particularly, an improvement on the knowledge of the fatigue behaviour of mechanical components made of Ti-6Al-4V, while operating in corrosive media, would be fundamental for aircraft or offshore applications to prevent dramatic failures due to environment-assisted fatigue or notch-induced fatigue crack growth. The fatigue resistance of smooth Ti-6Al-4V components and specimens tested in air has been already extensively studied, but the effect of a very aggressive environment, such as a methanol solution, has not been evaluated enough despite its great importance in some technical applications. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of a methanol solution (at different concentrations) on the axial fatigue performances of smooth flat dog-bone specimens. The collected data will be then compared to previous experimental results obtained for the same specimens tested in a NaCl solution (3.5 wt%) and under inert environments, by considering also the influence of mechanical notches.