Cyclic fracture behaviour of 304LN stainless steel under load and displacement control modes

Attempts have been made to understand cyclic fracture behaviour of AISI 304LN stainless steel used for nuclear piping materials under load vis-a-vis displacement controlled fracture tests; the former closely simulate the seismic loading conditions. The load controlled tests indicate that a material fails in a limited number of cycles even when the load amplitudes are sufficiently below the maximum load in a monotonic JR test. The displacement controlled tests, on the other hand, show that the energy absorbing ability of a material gets severely reduced under cyclic loading conditions. The obtained results on standard laboratory specimens have been compared with similar available results on components in order to provide guidelines for maximum load bearing capability of engineering components under cyclic loading.