Tensile tests and fatigue tests on differently heat-treated low carbon (non- and low-alloy) steels were conducted and accompanied by non-destructive electrical resistometric (ER) and magnetic Barkhausen noise (MBN) measuring devices, in order to establish an improved short-time fatigue life estimation method according to StressLife. MaRePLife (Material Response Partitioning) is the hereby proposed method for calculating S-N curves in the HCF regime, based on the partitioning of material responses acquired during the above-mentioned mechanical tests. The rules were set to make use of the information gathered from pre-conducted tensile tests, which helps to determine the parameters of two load increase tests (LIT) and two constant amplitude tests (CAT). The results of the calculated S-N curves were satisfactory and could be verified by more separately conducted fatigue tests on specimens under different material conditions.
Keywords: MaRePLife; NDT; StressLife; constant amplitude test; electrical resistance; fatigue life; load increase test; load-free sequence; low carbon steel; magnetic Barkhausen noise; tensile test.