Prediction of thermo-mechanical fatigue life of superalloy components

Important results from the project

The goal for the project is to develop an effective method to predict life in civil aircraft engine components. Haynes 282 has been tested experimentally and analysed. A thorough investigation of the rate-independent plastic behavior has been made in order to enable modeling of typical cyclic phenomena. Time-dependent inelastic behaviour and life prediction have not been studied carefully due to a long delay of experimental results. Initial studies show that it is possible to capture these phenomena with quite simple methods.

Expected long term effects

The expected project result is that GKN should have efficient methods to determine the response and life in civil aircraft engine components. The studied methods are not yet available in the commercial FE-code ANSYS which is used at GKN. The rate-independent plastic model together with a simple creep model has been tested for another material used at the space division. The results look promising.

Approach and implementation

The project has been set-up such that the sister project was responsible for the material testing and this part of the project responsible for material parameter calibration and material model selection. Available methods has primarily been tested. Due to problems with the testing equipment and test specimens, the project has been forced to investigate a number of additional topics. This was made on the cost of time-dependent plasticity and life prediction methods which were less investigated than expected.