Cyclic Deformation and Low-Cycle Fatigue for 316LN Stainless Steel under Non-proportional Loading

Abstract

The effects of loading path and strain amplitude ratio on the cyclic behavior and fatigue life were investigated on a 316LN nuclear grade stainless steel employing a series of symmetrically strain-controlled fatigue tests at room temperature. The loading paths of Uniaxial, Torsional, Proportional, Rhombic, Rectangular, and Circular were employed with the constant equivalent strain amplitude of 0.5%. The strain amplitude ratio of 2.35, 1.73 and 1.27, defined by the ratio of shear strain amplitude to the axial strain amplitude, was realized by changing the shear strain amplitude under Proportional, Rhombic, Rectangular and Elliptical loading paths. As expected, the significant non-proportional additional hardening was observed. It’s interesting to note that the axial cyclic stress response varied with the strain amplitude ratio, and the law was different under different loading paths. The fatigue life of all the tests were evaluated by three critical plane criteria proposed by Smith-Watson-Topper (SWT), Fatemi-Socie (FS) and Chen-Xu-Huang (CXH). Results show that the SWT criterion significantly overestimated the fatigue life of non-proportional loading because the effect of shear damage was not considered. The CXH criterion for tensile-type failure yielded good prediction results except for two torsional data points. The FS criterion provided better predictions than other models.