A miniaturized thin-plate low cycle fatigue test method at elevated temperature

This study aims to develop a high-temperature low cycle fatigue test method using a nonstandard miniature thin-plate specimen in order to characterize the cyclic viscoplasticity behavior of a component material. For demonstration, fully reversed strain-range controlled low cycle fatigue and creep-fatigue tests at 600°C have been performed for a martensitic steel using standard-sized full-scale specimens and miniaturized thin-plate specimens, respectively. Because the displacement is not directly measured from the uniform gauge section of the miniaturized specimen, a geometry-dependent scaling factor is obtained and used to convert the uniaxial strain. The results obtained are shown that the miniaturized test method developed in this work has exhibited a clear possibility to produce comparable low cycle fatigue data with those that are normally obtained by conventional standard specimen tests.