The paper aims to illustrate the relevant use of infrared thermography as a non destructive, real-time and non contact technique (a) to observe the physical processes of damage, fatigue and failure on metallic specimens subjected to low-cycle rotating bending loadings, (b) to detect the occurrence of intrinsic dissipation and (c) to evaluate rapidly the fatigue strength of the tested materials. In addition, this infrared thermographic technique readily describes the damage location and the mechanism of the structure failure.