Non-destructive evaluation of fatigue and creep-fatigue damage by means of the induced-current focused potential drop technique

Quantitative evaluation of damage accumulation including crack initiation and propagation is one of the major concerns of industrial plant management and plant licence renewal. In order to develop a novel non-destructive testing (NDT) and non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technique for damage evaluation, the induced-current focused potential drop (ICFPD), originally proposed for a defect inspection, was employed. In this study, ICFPD was successfully applied to a non-destructive damage evaluation based on crack measurements. The measurements were taken on fatigued specimens with various degrees of fatigue damage. The ICFPD can clearly detect and differentiate the damage accumulation processes including crack initiation, small crack growth and subsequent macroscopic crack growth. In order to demonstrate the applicability of damage evaluation assessments based on small crack measurements, ICFPD has also been applied to creep-fatigue loading where damage evaluation of a fusion reactor material is based on small crack measurements by the ICFPD technique and a novel methodology is proposed.