Conducting thermomechanical fatigue test in air at light water reactor relevant temperature intervals

In Light Water Reactors (LWR), many structural components are made of austenitic stainless steels (SS). These components are subject to extreme conditions, such as large temperature gradients and pressure loads during service. Hence, the fatigue and fracture behavior of austenitic SS under these conditions has evoked consistent interest over the years. Most studies dealing with this problem in the past, investigated the isothermal fatigue (IF) condition, which is not the case in the service, and less attention has been paid to thermomechanical fatigue (TMF). Moreover, the existing codes of practice and standards for TMF testing are mainly derived from the high temperature TMF tests (Tmean > 400 °C). This work presents the development of a facility to perform TMF tests under LWR relevant temperature interval in air. The realized testing parameters and tolerances are compared with the recommendations of existing codes of practice and standards from high temperature tests. The effectiveness of the testing facility was verified with series of TMF and IF tests performed on specimens made out of a commercial austenitic SS TP347 pipe material. The results revealed that the existing tolerances in standards are quite strict for the application of lower temperature ranges TMF tests. It was found that the synchronous, in-phase (IP) TMF tested specimens possess a higher lifetime than those subjected to the asynchronous, out-of-phase (OP) TMF and IF at Tmax in the investigated strain range for austenitic SS. Nevertheless, the fatigue lifetime of all the test conditions was similar in the engineering scale.