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HAL is a multidisciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

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Fatigue lifetime assessment is essential in the design of structures. Under-estimated predictions may result in unnecessary in service inspections. Conversely, over-estimated predictions may have serious consequences on the integrity of structures. In some nuclear power plant components, the fatigue loading may be equibiaxial because of thermal fatigue. So the potential impact of multiaxial loading on the fatigue life of components is a major concern. Meanwhile, few experimental data are available on austenitic stainless steels. It is essential to improve the fatigue assessment methodologies to take into account the potential equi-biaxial fatigue damage. Hence this requires obtaining experimental data on the considered material with a strain tensor in equibiaxial tension. Two calibration tests (with strain gauges and image correlation) were used to obtain the relationship between the imposed deflection and the radial strain on the FABIME2 specimen. A numerical study has confirmed this relationship. Biaxial fatigue tests are carried out on two austenitic stainless steels for different values of the maximum deflection, and with a load ratio equal to -1. The interpretation of the experimental results requires the use of an appropriate definition of strain equivalent. In nuclear industry, two kinds of definition are used: von Mises and TRESCA strain equivalent. These results have permitted to estimate the impact of the equibiaxiality on the fatigue life of components.

One possible application of Nb3Sn, whose superconducting properties far exceed those of NbTi, is the fabrication of short and powerful quadrupole magnets for the crowded interaction regions of large particle accelerators. To learn about Nb3Sn technology and to evaluate fabrication techniques, DAPNIA/STCM at CEAlSaclay has undertaken an R&D program aimed at designing and building a 1-m-long, 56-mm-single-aperture quadrupole magnet model. The model relies on the same coil geometry as the LHC arc quadrupole magnets, but has no iron yoke. It is expected to produce a nominal field gradient of 211 T/m at 11,870 A. The coils are wound from Rutherford-type cables insulated with quartz fiber tapes, before being heat-treated and vacuum-impregnated with epoxy resin. Laminated, austenitic collars, locked around the coil assembly by means of keys restrain the Lorentz forces. After reviewing the conceptual design of the magnet model, we report on the cable and cable insulation development programs and we present the results of NbTi-Nb3Sn cable splice tests.

Fatigue lifetime assessment is essential in the design of structures. Under-estimated predictions may result in unnecessary in service inspections. Conversely, over-estimated predictions may have serious consequences on the integrity of structures. In some nuclear power plant components, the fatigue loading may be equi-biaxial because of thermal fatigue. So the potential impact of multiaxial loading on the fatigue life of components is a major concern. Meanwhile, few experimental data on austenitic stainless steels is available. It is essential to improve the fatigue assessment methodologies to take into account the potential equi-biaxial fatigue damage. For this reason, a new experimental data must be obtained on the considered material with a strain tensor in equi-biaxial tension. The aim of this paper is to present a new device “FABIME2” developed in the LISN in collaboration with EDF and AREVA. This new device allows accurate quantification of the effects of both equi-biaxial strain state as well as structure (such as mean stress) on the fatigue life. A Finite Element Modeling is also performed in order to obtain a precise description of the strain state in the specimen.