Failure of a Forged Semikilled 1015 Steel Hook on a 13-mm (12-in.) Diam Chain Sling

A hook on a two-leg chain (each 13 mm diam, included angle 60 deg) failed at the junction of the eye and shank while lifting a 4990 kg load. The diam of the hook at this junction was approximately 22 mm. Light intergranular oxidation at the surface on the side of the hook where cracking started was revealed by visual examination of the fracture region. Almost 50% of the fracture surface was found to contain beach marks (indicative of fatigue failure) while the remainder contained cleavage facets. A medium-coarse acicular as-forged structure was revealed by metallographic examination and the metal was showed by chemical analysis to be semikilled 1015 steel. The fatigue fracture was concluded to have initiated in the intergranular oxidation region and the failure of the hook was contributed by the poor fatigue and impact properties of the forged structure. As a corrective measure, the chain-sling hook was replaced with one made of normalized, fully killed, finegrain 1020 steel.