Fatigue behaviour assessment of C45 steel by means of energy-based methods

Methods and techniques presented in literature for studying the fatigue behaviour of materials involve expensive, long lasting experimental campaigns and often a data analysis providing any information about damage localisation and occurrence. To avoid a time-consuming mechanical characterisation and to provide more information about where and when damage is occurring, the full-field experimental techniques such as infrared thermography allows the assessment of parameters that are related to the energy conversion to heat. In this work, the relationship between these thermal parameters (thermal methods) sentinels of the energy dissipated per cycle and the energy absorbed in every cycle is presented for the C45 steel undergoing stepwise loading fatigue tests.