TSR–CSR diagram for 304 stainless steel

•Fretting fatigue of 304 stainless steel under BWR environment was investigated.•TSR–CSR diagram for 304 was constructed under various environments.•The effectiveness of the proposed TSR–CSR diagram for stainless steels was confirmed. The tangential stress range (TSR)–compressive stress range (CSR) diagrams for various materials have been proposed in the previous papers, which can give the fretting fatigue failure condition and then can be used as a fretting fatigue design curve regardless of geometry and test condition. In the present study, fretting fatigue behavior of the sensitized stainless steels was investigated under pressurized hot water (288°C, 7.3MPa), 288°C in air and room temperature. Fretting fatigue behavior of the as-received 304 stainless steel under 288°C in air and room temperature was also investigated to construct TSR–CSR diagram for the 304 stainless steel and to confirm the effectiveness of the TSR–CSR diagram for 304 stainless steels even under severe environment like nuclear power plants. Based on the fretting fatigue test results and the finite element analysis, the TSR–CSR diagrams under room temperature and 288°C in air and pressurized hot water for the sensitized and as-received 304 stainless steels were successfully obtained. The generalized TSR–CSR diagram was also obtained by using the flow stress for normalization and compared with that for other steels for confirming the usefulness of the generalized diagram. The data points for the present 304 stainless steels lay on the generalized TSR–CSR diagram obtained for other steels in previous work. Therefore, it could be confirmed that the generalized TSR–CSR diagram is applicable not only to common structural steels but also to 304 stainless steels.