Abstract
We proposed a new experimental method which is required to easily observe the growth behavior of fatigue cracks. In the proposed method, the image data of cracks were stored into the computer while the cyclic loading was interrupted. After testing, crack length was determined using an image processing software which was developed by authors. By comparing the data measured by the image processing system with those by the manual measurement with a microscope, the effectiveness of the image processing system was established. If the proposed method is used to monitor and observe the crack growth behavior automatically, the time and efforts for fatigue test could be dramatically reduced.
