Thermo-mechanical fatigue - the route to standardisation (“TMF-Standard” project)

Thermo-mechanical fatigue (TMF) data are needed for dimensioning of safety-critical parts, e.g. in power generation and in transportation by air, rail and road, and for designing of components, which operate at higher levels of efficiency and safety for longer periods of time. However, the current lack of a validated international standard for TMF leads to non-reproducibility of TMF data with negative implications on the design and economy of operation of many components. While a preliminary draft TMF standard has been written under the auspices of the International Standards Organisation (ISO), the "TMF-STANDARD" project addresses this issue at the European level, within the GROWTH programme of Framework Programme 5 funded by the European Commission. The R&D work in the TMF-Standard project has been started with the preparation of an inventory of institutions in the EU and the pre-accession states that perform TMF testing, and the testing methods and procedures which they apply. Afterwards, extensive pre-normative testing work has been carried out, the results of which have been considered in the drafting of a preliminary Code-of-Practice (CoP) that forms the base for the current validation round robin testing. The results of the validation tests are going to be subjected to statistical analysis, in order to substantiate the formulation of a validated CoP on strain-controlled TMF testing. The present paper summarizes the main objectives and achievements obtained so far within the TMF-Standard project, and gives an outlook on the further activities of the project.