<title>Determination of the fatigue limit of an austempered ductile iron using thermal infrared imagry</title>

Abstract

Previous work by the authors showed that the endurance limit of specimens, or mechanical components, can be predicted using thermal infrared imagery. The new technique enables the determination of the fatigue strength limit in a comparatively short period of time (few thousands cycles), and using very few specimens (theoretically only 1). The present work applies this technique to rotating-bending test specimens of austempered ductile iron, an alloy whose fatigue limit is, due to the high scatter dispersion of the data points and the long testing period required, generally difficult to determine by the traditional technique. This material exhibited higher fatigue strength than the familiar nodular cast iron. This was confirmed by the results derived from the traditional Wohler test and the new technique, and supported by the data gathered from literature.