Issue 35

G. Meneghetti et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 35 (2016) 172-181; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.35.20 179 where ' ,02 p  is the material cyclic proof stress. For the AISI 304L steel material analysed in this paper,  =7940 kg/m 3 , c=507 J/(kg · K) [19], ' ,02 p  =290 MPa [9]. With the aim to compare experimental results with the analytical solution Eq. (11), a dedicated fatigue tests was performed. A specimen containing a crack as long as half the width (i.e. the ligament length was about 23 mm according to Fig. 2) was installed in the fatigue machine to allow for thermal equilibrium with the surroundings so that the homogeneous temperature T 0 could be measured. Then the fatigue test was started with f L =37 Hz and the load was adjusted to apply a linear elastic stress intensity factor range equal to  K=36.9 MPa·m 0.5 ; therefore r p is equal to 6.44·10 -4 m according to Eq. (12). The temperature field as well as the signal coming from the load cell were registered synchronously by the infrared camera using a sampling rate f acq =200 Hz. To disregard the thermoelastic temperature oscillations superimposed to the mean temperature evolution T m , which are not taken into account in Eq. (11), an infrared image captured at a time t=t* was considered, when the applied force was close to zero. (a) V p  s r r p  2r p (b) 0 5·10 -4 1.0·10 -3 1.5·10 -3 2.0·10 -3 2.5·10 -3 293.5 294 294.5 295 295.5 r [m] 296 T m (r) [°K]   K=36.9 MPa·m 0.5 r p =6.44·10 -4 m f L =37 Hz t=1.835 s h L =63.4 W/m T 0 =293.25° K Eq. 11 Experimental data r p Figure 6 : a) Cyclic plastic zone V p and (b) comparison between experimental and theoretical radial temperature profile. Fig. 7 shows the evolution of the temperature averaged inside the plastic zone V p , T*(t), defined as: 1 ( ) 1 * ( ) ( ) pixel p n i i p p pixel V T t T t T t dV V n        (13) where n pixel is the number of pixel inside the cyclic plastic zone size V p . Fig. 7b shows the enlarged view of the “detail A” of Fig. 7a, where the thermoelastic effect superimposed to the mean temperature evolution T* m can be appreciated. Considering the radial temperature profiles that have been measured at t*=1.835 s (the applied force was approximately zero at this time), the total heat generated inside the cyclic plastic zone V p was calculated according to Eqs (5) and (6). To evaluate the last contribution on the right hand side of Eq. (5) (the internal energy contribution), a linear fit of T* in a time window equal to 1s (Fig. 7b) was done and the slope of T* m (t) was considered. After that, the constant heat generation per unit thickness h L to input in Eq. (11) was calculated as: 1 p L gen p V h H dV z     (14) and resulted equal to 63.0+0.4=63.4 W/m, where the first contribution is the conduction and the second is the internal energy term. Fig. 6b shows a comparison between the temperature field evaluated according to Eq. (11) and the experimental data for  =0°. According to [2], it can be seen that outside the cyclic plastic zone the measured temperature field is in good agreement with that evaluated under the hypothesis of linear heat generation, which Eq. (11) is based on.