Fatigue damage detection using cyclostationarity

In this paper, we present the second-order of cyclostationarity to detect and diagnose the fatigue damage of the stainless steel 3161 subjected to low cycle fatigue (LCF). LCF is defined by repetitive cycling in a low stress and a short period. The vibration response of material subjected to LCF provides information linked to the solicitation and to the fatigue damage. Thus, we considered a cantilever beam with breathing cracks and assumed that under the solicitation, breathing cracks generates non-linearity in the stiffness of the material and this one decreases with the damage. We used the second-order of the cyclostationarity to reveal this non-linearity and showed that the fatigue provide a random component in the signal, which increases with the fatigue damage. Thus, in the specific case of a material subjected to LCF, with a non-linear stiffness, we propose a new methodology to detect and diagnose the fatigue damage using a vibration signal. This methodology is based on the second order of the cyclostationarity. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.