ABSTRACT
This chapter gives a systematic treatment to thermomechanical fatigue (TMF), including both standard TMF and constrained TMF with dwell hold. It is shown that both the TMF hysteresis behavior and life can be described by the ICFT model considering the same deformation and damage mechanisms as in LCF in the application temperature range. Particularly, the ICFT allows delineation of plastic and creep strains in a complicated cycle with or without dwell, which is then quantitatively correlated to the physical damage occurring in the material during TMF. This further proves that complicated TMF behaviors are merely manifestation of the underlying physical deformation and damage mechanisms under the given loading profiles (or boundary conditions). This approach can save a lot testing effort in component design and validation, as compared to the empirical approach.
