Experimental Facility for High Cycle Thermal Fatigue Tests Using Laser Shocks

A new thermal fatigue testing facility is proposed in which thermal shocks are conducted with a pulsed laser beam. The temperature field on the surface of the specimen is measured with an infrared (IR) camera. Moreover, a speckle is created on this surface prior to applying the thermal shocks and an estimation of strain variations is proposed using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) techniques. This experimental strain variation is compared to the prediction obtained by Finite Element (FE) analyses conducted in previous experimental studies.