Detection of localized fatigue damage in steel by thermography

Fatigue damage of unalloyed steels in the high cycle regime is governed by localized cyclic plastic deformations and subsequent crack initiation. The extent of early microplastic deformations depends on the applied stress level, stress concentration at macroscopic notches, surface treatment, residual stresses etc. The onset of a nonlinear material response can be regarded as an early indicator of fatigue damage. During fatigue loading thermoelastic coupling and thermoplastic dissipation cause characteristic temperature variations in tested specimens which have been assessed by a highly sensitive infrared camera. A specialized data processing method in the time domain has been developed which allows to separate the different contributions to the measured temperature signal. In contrast to other methods - as e.g. measuring the rise of mean temperature during fatigue loading the proposed methodology is based on measurements during the stabilized temperature regimen and offers very high spatial resolution of localized phenomena. Investigations have been made on mildly notched cylindrical and also on welded specimens. The results confirm the close relation between the local temperature signal and typical fatigue phenomena. The new methodology allows for a much better localization and quantification of effects as cyclic plasticity, crack initiation, crack growth etc. The following paper presents considerations and experimental results of an application of thermography to the local assessment of fatigue damage.