Multi-cracking in uniaxial and biaxial fatigue of 304L stainless steel

When a mechanical part is subjected to a repeated mechanical stress, it may be damaged after a number of cycles by several cracks initiation and propagation of a main crack. This is the phenomenon of fatigue damage. The thesis deals specifically with possible damage to some components of nuclear plants due to thermal fatigue. Unlike conventional mechanical fatigue damage where a main crack breaks the part, the thermal fatigue damage usually results in the appearance of a surface crack network. Two aspects are discussed in the thesis. The first is the experimental study of fatigue multiple cracking stage also called multi-cracking. Two mechanical test campaigns with multi-cracking detection by digital image correlation were conducted. These campaigns involve uniaxial and equi-biaxial mechanical loads in tension/compression without mean stress. This work allows to monitor and to observe the evolution of different networks of cracks through mechanical solicitations. The second is the numerical simulation of the phenomenon of fatigue damage. Several types of model are used (stochastic, probabilistic, cohesive finite elements). The experimental results have led to identify a multiple crack initiation law in fatigue which is faced with the numerical results. This comparison shows the relevance of the use of an analytical probabilistic model to find statistical results on the density of cracks that can be initiated with thermal and mechanical fatigue loadings. (author)