Standard Practice for Strain Controlled Thermomechanical Fatigue Testing
In the utilization of structural materials in elevated temperature environments, components that are susceptible to fatigue damage may experience some form of simultaneously varying thermal and mechanical forces throughout a given cycle. These conditions are often of critical concern because they combine temperature dependent and cycle dependent (fatigue) damage mechanisms with varying severity relating to the phase relationship between cyclic temperature and cyclic mechanical strain. Such effects can be found to influence the evolution of microstructure, micromechanisms of degradation, and a variety of other phenomenological processes that ultimately affect cyclic life. The strain-controlled thermomechanical fatigue test is often used to investigate the effects of simultaneously varying thermal and mechanical loadings under idealized conditions, where cyclic theoretically uniform temperature and strain fields are externally imposed and controlled throughout the gage section of the specimen.
