Application of inverse heat transfer to fatigue fracture

Cyclic actuation tends to cause self-heating in the material as the structure experiences fatigue, where the movement and coalescence of defects lead to crack formation, propagation, and eventual fracture. This study explores the modeling aspects of the self-heating phenomenon using a one-dimensional inverse heat problem to analyze heat generation and dissipation to quantify the plastic work rates needed for predicting fatigue life. The approach is based on analyzing the surface thermography obtained using an infrared camera and numerically solving an inverse Fourier heat conduction equation. Formulation of the inverse problem via constrained optimization and method of solution for analyzing the fatigue behavior of CS 1018 flat dog bone specimens subjected to fully reversed bending fatigue are presented. The proposed model demonstrates superior accuracy in predicting the location of maximum heat generation and identifying potential fracture zones compared to traditional methods.