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

Abstract 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.