Search

The fatigue damage behavior was experimentally investigated in different axial-torsional thermo-mechanical loading conditions for Ni-based superalloy GH4169. The strain controlled tests were carried out with the same von Mises equivalent mechanical strain amplitude of 0.8% in the temperature range from 360°C to 650°C. The results show that the fatigue life is drastically reduced when the axial mechanical strain and the temperature are in-phase, which can be due to that the creep damage is induced by the tensile stress at high temperature. Moreover, the fatigue life is further decreased when the axial mechanical strain and the shear strain are out-of-phase, which can be attributed to that the non-proportional hardening can increase the creep and the oxidation damages. Furthermore, the tensile stress is crucial to the nucleation of creep cavities at high temperature compared with the shear stress. The tensile and shear stresses all can increase the creep damage under fatigue loading at high temperature. In addition, the oxidation damage can be induced during cyclic loading at high temperature, and it can be increased by the tensile mean stress caused in non-isothermal loading.

A new calculation approach is suggested to the fatigue life evaluation of notched specimens under multiaxial variable amplitude loading. Within this suggested approach, if the computed uniaxial fatigue damage by the pure torsional loading path is larger than that by the axial tension–compression loading path, a shear strain‐based multiaxial fatigue damage parameter is assigned to calculate multiaxial fatigue damage; otherwise, an axial strain‐based multiaxial fatigue damage parameter is assigned to calculate multiaxial fatigue damage. Furthermore, the presented method employs shear strain‐based and axial strain‐based multiaxial fatigue damage parameters in substitution of equivalent strain amplitude to consider the influence of nonproportional additional hardening. The experimental data of GH4169 superalloy and 7050‐T7451 aluminium alloy notched components are used to illustrate the presented multiaxial fatigue lifetime estimation approach for notched components, and the results reveal that estimations are accurate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fatigue–oxidation–creep damage model that can take into account the effect of multiaxial cyclic feature on the damage mechanism is proposed under axial-torsional thermo-mechanical fatigue loading. In the proposed model, the effects of non-proportional additional hardening on fatigue, oxidation, and creep damages are considered, and the variation of oxidation damage under different high temperature loading conditions is also described. Moreover, the intergranular creep damage needs to be equivalent to the transgranular damage before accumulating with the fatigue and oxidation damages. The fatigue, oxidation, and creep damages can be expressed as the fractions of fatigue life, critical crack length, and creep rupture time, respectively, which allows the linear accumulation of different types of damages on the basis of life fraction rule. In addition, the proposed model is validated by various fatigue experimental results, including uniaxial thermo-mechanical fatigue, axial-torsional thermo-mechanical fatigue, and isothermal axial-torsional fatigue under proportional and non-proportional loadings. The results showed that the errors are within a factor of 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the isothermal fatigue and creep damage, a life prediction approach under multiaxial thermo-mechanical loading was proposed in this investigation. In the proposed method, the multiaxial thermo-mechanical fatigue damage during one cycle period was divided into the isothermal fatigue damage and the creep damage. In order to evaluate conservatively, the isothermal fatigue damage during one cycle period was calculated by using multiaxial fatigue damage model at the maximum temperature during the whole period, and the creep damage during one cycle period was calculated by accumulating the creep damage of all portions originated from the divided time history for the axial load component and temperature history. The life prediction results by the proposed model showed a good agreement with experimental data for nickel-base alloy GH4169 and cobalt-base Haynes188 under axial-torsional thermo-mechanical loading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We have found no study conducted economic issues on patient outcomes after heart transplantation (HTx) in China for further development., Material/methods: From May 2004 to February 2006, there were 10 transplants performed in 9 male patients in our center: 1 heart lung recipient and 8 heart recipient. Among them, 7 lacked health insurance and 2 had insurance., Results: Their ages were between 24 years and 43 years (mean 39 years). The number of hospitalizations, number of days in hospital per admission, number of emergency room visits and mean left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) in the year before operation were 5.5, 54, 8.1 and 0.19 respectively. After operation, these figures decreased significantly to 1.7 (P<0.05), 18 (P<0.05), 1.1 (P<0.05) and 0.70 (P<0.05) respectively. During the follow up of 370~930d, one of the 9 patients who lacked health insurance died of acute rejection due to stopping mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) 7 months after operation and the heart lung recipient who also lacked health insurance died of pulmonary infection 1 year later. All patients who lacked health insurance experience emotional distress., Conclusions: HTx is a good treatment for selected patients with end-stage heart failure (ESHF) and future research is to be expected in the fields of insurance coverage to improve the quality of life and the Chinese transplant group should be commended for their courageous work in the treatment of end stage heart disease under challenging circumstances.