Characterization of the Fatigue Behavior of Austenitic Steel Using HTSL-SQUID

The assessment of the actual fatigue damage and thus the remaining lifetime of materials is a subject of enormous scientific and economical relevance. In spite of intensive research work the quantitative evalution of fatigue damage by means of nondestructive methods in order to calculate the remaining lifetime is still impossible. This paper will describe some aspects of the cyclic deformation behavior of the metastable austenitic steel AISI 321 which is often used in power stations and chemical plant constructions. The main aim of the present investigation is to determine the fatigue damage of cyclically loaded austenitic steel specimens by detecting the plasticity induced martensite content with the help of the SQUID measuring technique [1–4]