Low cycle fatigue properties of Alloy 617 base metal and weld joint at room temperature

Alloy 617 is the one of the leading candidate materials for intermediate heat exchangers (IHX) of a Very High Temperature Reactor (VHTR). System start-ups and shut-downs as well as power transients will produce low cycle fatigue (LCF) loadings of components. As a series of the work to better understand the LCF properties of Alloy 617 weld joints at high temperature, firstly, in this work, strain-controlled LCF testing of Alloy 617 base metal (BM) and weld joint (WJ) by a gas tungsten arc weld process (GTAW) were carried out. Fully reserved total-strain controlled LCF tests have been conducted at room temperature with four total strain ranges of 1.5, 1.2, 0.9, and 0.6%. For the LCF tests triangular test waveforms with a frequency of 0.25Hz were applied. The present paper is to characterize the LCF properties for Alloy 617 base metal (BM) and weld joint (WJ) from the cyclic stress response behavior and fatigue fracture behavior, with the comparative method. The cyclic stress response behavior was influenced by the level of total strain ranges and the material properties. Though base metal (BM) had shown higher plastic strain accumulation, the observed fatigue life of the weld joint (WJ) is lower than the base metal (BM). Coffin-Manson relationship and energy-life models can be used to determine the fatigue life. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd.