Beyond Shakedown-Ratcheting Boundary

The ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code (Section III and Section VIII) provides requirements to avoid a ratcheting (accumulating permanent strain) condition under cyclic thermal load application. The ratchet check in this code is based on the solutions presented by Miller in 1959. One important focus in Miller’s work was to estimate the accumulated plastic strain under cyclic loading. The existing pressure vessels and piping codes have been adopting Miller’s ratchet boundary solution where there is no cyclic plastic accumulation of strain. However, some of these codes also provide limit on accumulated plastic strain under ratcheting conditions. Since the cyclic loading also causes fatigue damage in thee component, the question how to account for the interaction of ratchet deformation, which may contribute to damage in the material, and fatigue damage arises, since the fatigue curves are obtained from tests in the absence of ratcheting. This paper investigates the solutions to calculate growth strain (incremental plastic strain) and their application in design including taking into account the interaction with fatigue. Finite element analysis is presented to validate the analytical solutions.