Damage study of an austenitic stainless steel in high cycle multiaxial fatigue regime

Biaxial fatigue tests are performed up to 1 000 000 cycles at room temperature. Cross specimens of 304L steel thinned in their centre to initiate crack, are loaded by a biaxial testing machine. The strain at the centre of the sample is measured during loading using a stroboscopic Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique, and crack initiation on the whole gauge zone is early detected by a second DIC-based measurement. A special optical assembly is designed to allow for simultaneous measurements. Three types of loadings are performed: equi-biaxial with a loading ratio R = 0.1, equi-biaxial with loading ratio R = -1, pseudo uniaxial (cyclic loading at R 0.1 in one direction and constant loading in the other). First results are commented. (authors)