Calculation and Analysis Method of Fretting Wear and Fretting Fatigue Life

Fretting damage is a common phenomenon in engineering. It can cause fastening components loose, reduce fatigue life and enhance corrosion. Fretting experiments are generally time-consuming and difficult to conduct direct observation of damages. Computer simulation of fretting is becoming more and more popular in recent years. In this article, we shall give a review on some methods relevant for simulation and analysis of fretting wear and fretting fatigue life. For fretting wear simulation, Archard model is realized in finite element calculation together with suitable multilayer nodes update method. To estimate fretting fatigue life, multi-axial fatigue criteria are often used. Especially the so called Smith-Watson-Topper parameter can be easily implemented in simulation of fatigue crack initiation and life estimations. However, coupled calculation of fretting wear and fretting fatigue is still very time consuming, in particularly in three dimensions, although both experiments and calculations have shown clearly that fretting wear can have rather strong influence on the fatigue crack initiation and life estimation. To demonstrate this, a two dimensional example is presented. The results indicate that fatigue life estimation without considering the effect on fretting wear could be several magnitudes smaller than the life with fretting wear.