FATIGUE BEHAVIOUR OF COPPER-BRAZED 316L STAINLESS STEEL

Abstract

The plate heat exchanger (PHE) is a component that provides heat to be transferred from hot water to domestic cold water without mixing them with high efficiency. Over the lifetime of the PHE, cyclic pressure acts on the brazing points and the plates, and this can lead to fatigue failure. The fatigue behaviour of the PHE, designed by using copper-brazed 316L (also known as 1.4404) stainless steel, was investigated by performing fatigue tests to obtain the SN curve of the analysed brazed joint. The fatigue tests were performed on a Vibrophore 100 testing machine under the load ratio R = 0.1 for different values of calculated amplitude stress. Based on the obtained experimental results, an appropriate material model of the analysed brazed joint was created, which was validated with a numerical calculation in the framework of a program code Ansys. A validated material model can then be used for the subsequent numerical analysis of the PHE.