The Thermo-Mechanical Behaviour of Alloy 600 and Alloy 82 Materials

Isothermal uniaxial low cycle fatigue tests have been performed at two different total strain ranges (1.5% and 2.5%) and at different temperatures (20, 200, 400 and 600°C) for Alloy 600 and Inconel 82 materials. The materials hardening behaviour has been fitted using the Lemaitre Chaboche formulations using different fitting strategies. Thermo mechanical tests have been performed using a Gleeble machine on both parent material and weld metal. In these tests thermal cycles were applied to a constrained specimen simulating the welding conditions in both the heat affected zone and a weld bead when subsequent beads are deposited alongside. The tests were modelled using two different FE codes, namely Code_Aster and Abaqus. This allowed the validation of the Lemaitre-Chaboche model parameters when the material is subjected to realistic thermo-mechanical cycles. Simulations were conducted using both annealing and/or viscous recovery features to examine their impact on the predicted response.