Estimation of fatigue damage for an austenitic stainless steel (SUS304) using magnetic methods

There are some fatigue damage estimation methods of the austenitic stainless steel that uses the martensitic transformation. For instance, they are the remanent magnetization method, the excitation method, and so on. Those two methods are being researched also in our laboratory now. In the remanent magnetization method, it is well known that the relation between fatigue damage and the remanent magnetization is simple, clear, and reproducible. However, this method has the disadvantage to need a special magnetizer. This method cannot be easily used on the site such as the factory. On the other hand, because the special magnetizer is unnecessary, the excitation method can use easily on the site. The output signal of this method is small. In this paper, two fatigue evaluation methods such as the remanent magnetization method and the excitation method are introduced. In addition, we report on the result of comparing the fatigue evaluation performances of two methods.