Experimental results of uniaxial ratcheting tests for stainless steel 304 (SS304) under stress-controlled condition at room temperature showed that the elastic domain defined in this paper expands with accumulation of plastic strain. Both ratcheting strain and viscoplastic strain rates reduce with the increase of elastic domain, and the total strain will be saturated finally. If the saturated strain and corresponded peak stress of different experimental results under the stress ratio R ≥ 0 are plotted, a curve demonstrating the material shakedown states of SS304 can be constituted. Using this curve, the accumulated strain in a pressure vessel subjected to cyclic internal pressure can be determined by only an elastic-plastic analysis, and without the cycle-by-cycle analysis. Meanwhile, a physical experiment of a thin-walled pressure vessel subjected to cyclic internal pressure has been carried out to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of this noncyclic method. By comparison, the accumulated strains evaluated by the noncyclic method agreed well with those obtained from the experiments. The noncyclic method is simpler and more practical than the cycle-by-cycle method for engineering design.
