Judgment criterion of the dominant factor of creep-fatigue crack growth in a nickel-based superalloy at elevated temperature

The creep-fatigue crack growth problem remains challenging since materials exhibit different linear and nonlinear behaviors depending on the environmental and loading conditions. In this paper, we systematically carried out a series of creep-fatigue crack growth experiments to evaluate the influence from temperature, stress ratio, and dwell time for the nickel-based superalloy GH4720Li. A transition from coupled fatigue-dominated fracture to creep-dominated fracture was observed with the increase of dwell time at 600 °C, while only the creep-dominated fracture existed at 700 °C, regardless of the dwell time. A concise binomial crack growth model was constructed on the basis of existing phenomenal models, where the linear terms are included to express the behavior under pure creep loading, and the nonlinear terms were introduced to represent the behavior near the fracture toughness and during the creep-fatigue interaction. Through the model implementation and validation of the proposed model, the correlation coefficient is higher than 0.9 on ten out of twelve sets of experimental data, revealing the accuracy of the proposed model. This work contributes to an enrichment of creep-fatigue crack growth data in the typical nickel-based superalloy at elevated temperatures and could be referable in the modeling for damage tolerance assessment of turbine disks.

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A French Guideline for Defect Assessment at Elevated Temperature and Leak Before Break Analysis

Flaw Evaluation, Service Experience, and Reliability ◽

10.1115/pvp2003-2030 ◽

2003 ◽

Author(s):

Y. Kayser ◽

S. Marie ◽

M. H. Lacire ◽

S. Chapuliot ◽

B. Drubay

Keyword(s):

Fatigue Crack ◽

Elevated Temperature ◽

Fatigue Crack Growth ◽

Crack Initiation ◽

Crack Growth ◽

Characteristic Distance ◽

Defect Assessment ◽

Creep Fatigue ◽

Creep Fatigue Crack ◽

Leak Before Break

A large program is performed in France in order to develop, for the design and operating FBR plants, defect assessment procedures and Leak-Before-Break methods (L.B.B.). The main objective of this A16 guide is to propose analytical solutions at elevated temperature coherent with those proposed at low temperature by the RSE-M (RSE-M, 1997). The main items developed in this A16 guide for laboratory specimen, plates, pipes and elbows are the following: • Evaluation of ductile crack initiation and crack propagation based on the J parameter and material characteristics as JR-Δa curve or Ji / Gfr. Algorithms to evaluate the maximum endurable load under increasing load for through wall cracks or surface cracks are also proposed. • Determination of fatigue or creep-fatigue crack initiation based on the σd approach calculating stress and strain at a characteristic distance d from the crack tip. • Evaluation of fatigue crack growth based on da/dN-ΔKeff relationship with a ΔKeff derived from a simplified estimation of ΔJ for the cyclic load. • Evaluation of creep-fatigue crack growth adding the fatigue crack growth and the creep crack growth during the hold time derived from a simplified evaluation of C*. • Leak-Before-Break procedure. The fracture mechanic parameters determined in the A16 guide (KI, J, C*) are derived from handbooks and formula in accordance with those proposed in the RSE-M document for in service inspection. Those are: • The KI handbook for a large panel of surface and through-wall defects in plates, pipes and elbows. • Elastic stress and reference stress formula. • Analytical Js and Cs* formulations for mechanical and through thickness thermal load. The main part of the formula and assessment methodologies proposed in the A16 guide are included in a software, called MJSAM, developed under the MS Windows environment in support of the document. This allows a simple application of the analysis proposed in the document.

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