Fatigue damage assessment in AISI 8620 steel using Barkhausen noise

The Barkhausen noise method has long been applied to measure time degradation of engineering materials. In this paper, fatigue damage evolution of an engineering structural AISI 8620 steel is studied by using Barkhausen noise measurements. The influence of applied alternating stresses and number of cycles on a Barkhausen noise parameter was evaluated. For stress range between fatigue and yield limit of the material, it was found that the Barkhausen noise increase with increasing applied stress. The Barkhausen noise increases rapidly at the begin of test, in the early stage of fatigue life. When the applied maximum stress is above yield limit of the material, plastic strain has to be accounted for, and no equivalence between fatigue damage and Barkhausen noise can be stated.