TMF Crack Initiation Lifing of Austenitic Carbide Precipitating Alloys

Abstract

Recent work within DDIT has shown that Ni base superalloys like HAYNES230, Co base superalloys like HAYNES188, super stainless steels like HAYNES HR-120, and stainless steels like 253MA are similar from a materials modelling point of view. They are austenitic, delivered solutioned, and precipitate secondary carbides and other brittle phases in service and during cyclic tests at elevated temperature. These new phases result in a significantly reduced RT ductility, while the high temperature ductility is at most moderately reduced. Therefore, TMF cycles, which repeatedly go down to low temperatures, see an embrittled alloy whereas LCF tests at Tmax (in the TMF cycle) do not. This suggests that the classical use of LCF data at Tmax might given non-conservative life estimates. Literature studies and materials testing have confirmed that TMF data may be well below LCF data at Tmax verifying the non-conservatism of the classical methodology. Furthermore, the cyclic life tends to decrease with decreasing Tmin in TMF tests, and IP TMF is usually more detrimental than OP TMF due to creep-fatigue interaction. While standard TMF tests are closer to reality than LCF tests, we are still not certain that they capture all detrimental effects under component cycling, and are running additional, carefully planned, TMF tests on aged specimen at low Tmin values to improve the analysis. More tests, especially biaxial IP TMF tests, will eventually be needed to get a comprehensive picture. A new TMF data backed model has, however, already shown a higher precision when compared with service experience than the classical creep-fatigue methodology which is calibrated with LCF data at Tmax. Further testing and analysis will enable us to refine the TMF model and extend it to additional ACP alloys. The main input to the TMF model is the stabilised inelastic strain range, as calculated by the constitutive model described in an earlier ASME Turbo paper, GT2002-30659.