The fatigue life of austenitic stainless steel has recently been shown to undergo remarkable reduction with decrease in strain rate and increase in temperature in water. Either of these parameters as a factor of this reduction has been examined quantitatively and methods for predicting the fatigue life reduction factor Fen in any given set of conditions have been proposed. All these methods are based primarily on fatigue data in simulated PWR water owing to the few data available in simulated BWR water. Recent Japanese fatigue data in simulated BWR water clearly indicated the effects of the environment on fatigue degradation to be milder than under actual PWR conditions. A new method for determining Fen in BWR water was developed in the present study and a revised Fen in PWR water is also proposed based on new data. These new models differ from those previously used primarily with regard to the manner in which strain amplitude is considered to affect Fen in the environment.
The French Regulatory Commission insisted on a survey justifying the assumed mechanical behavior of components exposed to Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) water under cyclic loading without taking into account its effect. In the US and Japan, the fatigue life correlation factors, so called Fen, are formulated and standardized on the basis of laboratory data to take into account the effect on fatigue life evaluation. However, the current fatigue codification, suffers from a lack of understanding of environmental effects on the fatigue lives of stainless steels in simulated hydrogenated PWR environments. Samples tested in a recent study were analyzed to highlight the strain rate effect (within a range 0.4%/s to 0.004%/s) at the early stage of fatigue life in PWR primary environment for a 304L stainless steel. The deleterious effect of PWR primary environment on fatigue crack initiation was observed with a quantitative microscopic approach. Multi scale observations of oxide morphology and microstructure were carried out from common optical microscopy using recent technologies such as 3D oxide reconstruction, and DualBeam observations.
The fatigue life of austenitic stainless steel has recently been shown to undergo remarkable reduction with decrease in strain rate and increase in temperature in water. Either of these parameters as a factor of this reduction has been examined quantitatively and methods for predicting the fatigue life reduction factor Fen in any given set of conditions have been proposed. All these methods are based primarily on fatigue data in simulated PWR water owing to the few data available in simulated BWR water. Recent Japanese fatigue data in simulated BWR water clearly indicated the effects of the environment on fatigue degradation to be milder than under actual PWR conditions. A new method for determining Fen in BWR water was developed in the present study and a revised Fen in PWR water is also proposed based on new data. These new models differ from those previously used primarily with regard to the manner in which strain amplitude is considered to affect Fen in the environment.
Over the last 20 years or so, many studies have revealed the deleterious effect of the environment on fatigue life of austenitic stainless steels in pressurized water reactor (PWR) primary water. The fatigue life correlation factor, so-called Fen, has been standardized to consider the effect on fatigue life evaluation. The formulations are function of strain rate and temperature due to their noticeable negative effect compared with other factors [1,2]. However, mechanism causing fatigue life reduction remains to be cleared. As one of possible approaches to examine underlying mechanism of environmental effect, the authors focused on the effect of plastic strain, because it could lead microstructural evolution on the material. In addition, in the case of stress corrosion cracking (SCC), it is well known that the strain-hardening prior to exposure to the primary water can lead to remarkable increase of the susceptibility to cracking [3,4]. However, its effect on fatigue life has not explicitly been investigated yet. The main effort in this study addressed the effect of the prior strain-hardening on low cycle fatigue life of 304L stainless steel (SS) exposed to the PWR primary water. A plate of 304LSS was strain hardened by cold rolling or tension prior to fatigue testing. The tests were performed under axial strain-controlled at 300 °C in primary water including B/Li and dissolved hydrogen, and in air. The effect on environmental fatigue life was investigated through a comparison of the Fen in experiments and in regulations, and also the effect on the fatigue limit defined at 106 cycles was discussed.
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