As mechanical stress is applied, the structure of metals changes. As stress increases, materials undergo plastic deformation and can accumulate damage that compromises structural integrity. Thus, research on non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods for metals like steel is important. Doing so can allow early characterization of metal fatigue and help prevent failures without adding additional stress to the materials. One valuable NDE method is second-harmonic generation (SHG). SHG is a non-linear optical technique that can be used to characterize materials. A material’s crystalline structure will likely change with deformation, which would be reflected in the material’s surface. Therefore, we are using SHG to analyze steel sample surfaces to determine trends between SHG response and changes in steel due to mechanical deformation. Our methods involve stretching steel samples at varied rates and extensions and measuring SHG responses before and after stretching. The trends we discover may enable future non-destructive screenings of metal samples to verify whether they need to be replaced or not.

Characterization of tensile deformation in steel with non-linear optics

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