Int. J. Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 6, 2007 635 Copyright © 2007 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Damage initiation mechanism of a nodular cast iron under the very high cycle fatigue regime H.Q. Xue School of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, China E-mail: xuedang@nwpu.edu.cn E. Bayraktar Supmeca/LISMMA-Paris, School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Paris, France E-mail: bayraktar@supmeca.fr C. Bathias* Emeritus professor, University PARIS, LEEE/ITMA, 50 rue de Sevres, 92410 Ville d'Avray(Fr) E-mail: claude@bathias.com *Corresponding author Abstract: Fatigue behaviour in the Very High Cycle Fatigue (VHCF) of 10 10 cycles was investigated with a cast iron (GS51) under ultrasonic fatigue test system (20 kHz) in ambient air at room temperature with a stress ratio R =1. A high-speed and high-sensitivity infrared imaging system was used to measure the temperature changes during ultrasonic fatigue test at various load levels. The S-N curves obtained show that fatigue failure occurred beyond 10 9 cycles, fatigue limit does not exist for the cast iron. The temperature increased just at the beginning of the test, the temperature increased depending on the maximum stress amplitude. Fatigue initiation takes place always at the surface graphite or subsurface void; the change of fatigue initiation site from surface to subsurface is associated with the complex effects of applied maximum stress level, surface condition. Local temperature increased sharply is related to the crack initiation. [Received 25 April 2006; Accepted 25 January 2007] Keywords: ultrasonic fatigue; damage mechanism; nodular cast iron; thermal dissipation; Very High Cycle Fatigue; VHCF. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Xue, H.Q., Bayraktar, E. and Bathias, C. (2007) ‘Damage initiation mechanism of a nodular cast iron under very high cycle fatigue regime’, Int. J. Computational Materials Science and Surface Engineering, Vol. 1, No. 6, pp.635–649.