| Abstract: | We investigated a method to detect fatigue damage of steels without contact using laser speckle. In the earlier stage of fatigue in steels, slipbands appear on the surface and microscopic shear strain is stored in the slipbands. The slipbands appear more densely with progress of fatigue damage. When a laser illuminates the surface of the fatigued steel, light intensity distribution of the laser speckle pattern formed by the reflected light changes with the change of surface properties caused by slipbands. It has been clarified that the width of the speckle pattern broadens corresponding to spatial frequency distribution of the surface profile and thus it is presumed that speckle pattern broadens with increase of slipband density. This shows that we can detect fatigue damage by observing the laser speckle pattern on material surface. The method presented in this paper is based on this phenomenon. We observed change of the speckle pattern during fatigue loading under constant stress amplitude using a steel specimen and the relation between speckle pattern, number of loading cycles and also magnitude of loading was considered. We investigated the possibility of detection of fatigue damage using this method and also proposed a method to estimate fatigue life by observing change tendency of the speckle pattern depending on the number of loading cycles in the earlier stage of fatigue before crack initiation. |
