An experimental study on thermal-stress ratchetting of austenitic stainless steel by a three bars specimen

Abstract A new test specimen for thermal-stress ratchetting is proposed and tested for standard AISI-304 stainless steel. Its purpose is to avoid the drawbacks of a tubular specimen. It is a special plate-shaped specimen with two symmetrical, straight air gaps in the center portion and load chucks at the ends. Since three surfaces out of four on the side bars are enveloped by sheathed trace heaters, the middle bar becomes a cold element and the rest side bars hot elements during thermal loading. Experiments on thermal-stress ratchetting are performed with this specimen. Interesting incremental strain growth behaviour of the specimen subjected to cyclic thermal stresses under a steady primary load is obtained with regard to an actual strain-hardening material. It was confirmed that incremental strain growth decreased with increase in the cumulative strain growth. There is expected to be an asymptotic cumulative strain growth for any test condition. It is also found that the tendency for theoretical strain growth is fairly similar to that found experimentally. However, the experimental data are considerably greater than the theoretical data. This can be explained qualitatively by a decrease in both yield strength and Young's modulus at high temperature for the hot elements.