Creep–fatigue endurance of 304 stainless steels

In this paper, the effects of different factors on the combined creep–fatigue endurance of 304 stainless steel as well as the strength and limitation of the different approaches for creep–fatigue life prediction are reviewed. The factors, which influence on the creep–fatigue endurance, include hold time, strain range, temperature, and stress relaxation behavior. Some relationships between time or number of cycles to failure and the individual factors are summarized from the available data. A phenomenological approach is proposed to describe the synergistic effects of different factors. The approaches used for creep–fatigue life prediction range from purely empirical to mechanistic models based on microstructural observations. Each approach does have some degree of success in dealing with a specific set of creep–fatigue data. The comparison of the prediction capacities of linear damage summation method, strain-range partitioning method, and damage rate approach is made for the same set of creep–fatigue data through Bayesian information criterion analysis. The damage rate model exhibits higher accuracy than other two models.