The study of a fatigue crack propagation in titanium Grade 2 using analysis of energy dissipation and acoustic emission data

•New complex experimental setup for fatigue crack study in metals are described.•Correlation between energy dissipation and AE activity at crack tip are shown.•Correlation between AE clusters and regimes of energy dissipation are shown. The paper is devoted to the experimental investigation of crack propagation in metal (titanium Grade 2 alloy) under fatigue loading (cyclic uniaxial tension-compression test). To investigate the crack propagation under fatigue loading the original experimental setup was developed, which includes an acoustic emission sensor, infrared camera, contact heat flux gauge and the system for crack length monitoring. Based on the obtained experimental data the correlation between the energy dissipation caused by plastic deformation at the fatigue crack tip and the energy of acoustic emission signals was found. The analysis of contact heat flux gauge data showed two different stages energy dissipation under fatigue crack propagation. A cluster analysis of acoustic signal confirmed the existence of different regimes of acoustic activity, probably corresponded to the different fracture mechanisms under fatigue crack propagation.