Rapid evaluation for high-cycle fatigue reliability of metallic materials through quantitative thermography methodology

•Quantitative thermography methodology for high-cycle fatigue parameters estimation.•High-cycle fatigue limit evaluated by correlation coefficient optimisation.•Theory and calculation of energy dissipation during high-cycle fatigue.•Rapid prediction of the high-cycle fatigue P–S–N curves of metallic materials. This work presents an approach based on quantitative thermography methodology for rapid prediction of the high-cycle fatigue reliability (three-parameter P–S–N curves) of metallic materials. In this approach, the energy dissipation during high-cycle fatigue is divided into two parts, i.e. the anelastic dissipation and the inelastic dissipation, whose relationships with the stress amplitude are formulated with a concept of damage effective stress. A calculation model of energy dissipation is developed on the basis of the thermodynamic framework. The randomness and discreteness of fatigue are considered by applying the correlation coefficient optimisation and maximum likelihood method. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method are validated through experiments involving FV520B steel.