Cyclic thermal loading in the creep range—I. Low levels of thermal loading

Abstract

Upper bounds on the deformation rates of structures subjected to cyclic thermal loading in the creep range are presented for low levels of thermal loading for a simple creep constitutive equation which includes the effect of thermal recovery. It is argued that the combination of material assumptions are conservative. The deformation rate is related to the strain rate in a reference material test at constant stress and cyclic temperature history. The level of stress is determined from the perfectly plastic shakedown solution and the reference temperature at a given instant is the same as that for the structure subjected to a constant load and the instantaneous temperature distribution.