Rapid determination of the high cycle fatigue properties of high temperature aeronautical alloys by self-heating measurements

The determination of high cycle fatigue (HCF) properties of a material with standard method requires a lot of specimens, and could be really time consuming. The self-heating method has been developed in order to predict S–N–P curves (i.e., amplitude stress – number of cycles to failure – probability of failure) with only a few specimens. So the time-saving advantage of this method has been demonstrated on several materials, at room temperature. In order to reduce the cost and time of fatigue characterization at high temperature, the self-heating method is adapted to characterize HCF properties of a titanium alloy, the Ti-6Al-4V (TA6V), at different temperatures. So the self-heating procedure is adjusted to conduct tests with a furnace. Two dissipative phenomena can be observed on self-heating curves. Because of this, a two-scale probabilistic model with two dissipative mechanisms is used to describe them. The first one is observed for low amplitudes of cyclic loading, under the fatigue limit, and the second one for higher amplitudes where the mechanisms of fatigue damage are activated and are dissipating more energy. This model was developed on steel at room temperature. Even so, it is used to describe the self-heating curves of the TA6V at several temperatures.