Fatigue characterization by heat source reconstruction under continuously varying stress amplitude

Self-heating measurements using thermography have proven to be an effective means of rapidly assessing the fatigue response materials. The paper validates use a post-processing technique, called “heat source” reconstruction, in case cyclic loading with continuously varying stress amplitudes, offering significant advantages over classical self-heating approaches: considerably reduced test time (some minutes compared few hours); continuous measurement mechanical dissipation versus amplitude; higher maximum amplitude achieved due slower accumulation damage during testing. approach was validated by comparison procedure, and opens new perspectives for characterization.