Life assessment of a 42CrMo4 steel under low-cycle fatigue and thermo-mechanical fatigue loading conditions

Abstract In this paper, a 42CrMo4 steel is subjected to Low-Cycle Fatigue (LCF) loading and Thermo-Mechanical Fatigue (TMF) loading in the temperature range between 300 °C and 600 °C. The experimental results show that the cyclic softening of the material is more significant with increasing temperature, and that both in-phase and out-of-phase TMF lead to a shorter lifetime than for LCF. Finally, a modification of the fatigue criterion from the literature is proposed in order to take into account the main damage mechanisms involved in LCF and TMF. A good correlation was achieved between the predicted results and the experimental results.