PREDICTIONS OF CREEP CRACK INITIATION PERIODS IN PRE-COMPRESSED 316H STAINLESS STEEL

Pre-compression of 316H stainless steel significantly alters its tensile, uniaxial creep and crack growth behaviour. It has previously been shown that reliable and conservative creep crack initiation predictions can generally be obtained for as-received 316H stainless steel using a variety of prediction methods. Given the changes in material behaviour caused by pre-compression, this paper applies similar prediction methods to pre-compressed 316H stainless steel at 550 degrees C. Several procedures are available for estimating creep crack initiation time periods. The suitability of a procedure depends on the availability of the necessary material data. The procedures considered in this paper include the use of the creep fracture mechanics parameter C*, the crack opening displacement concept, the sigma-d approach and the time dependent failure assessment diagram. Creep crack growth tests have been performed on compact tension specimens manufactured from 316H stainless steel which was uniformly pre-compressed by 4% and 8% at room temperature. For each test, the time for creep crack initiation to occur was recorded. Predicted creep crack initiation times have been compared with the experimentally determined values. Comparisons with as-received material are also included. For pre-compressed material, conservative creep crack initiation predictions were only consistently achieved using steady state creep crack growth rates predicted from C*. This is a significant difference to as-received material for which conservative predictions were generally obtained by a variety of methods. At this time, there is only a limited set of pre-compressed data making it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the appropriateness of the various creep crack initiation prediction methods. The differences in the results between the pre-compressed and as-received material do however highlight the need for further tests on pre-compressed material.