Comparative Fretting Fatigue Life Evaluation between Critical Plane Based and Deviatoric Strain Amplitude Based Methods Corrected for Surface Wear Damage

Fretting failure mode is commonly observed at the contact interface of mating parts, held together under normal load and subjected to vibratory and/or imbalanced system forces. This article presents the fretting fatigue life estimation of a complete flat-flat contact pair using a relatively new approach, i.e., deviatoric strain amplitude-based (SI) parameter, further combined with Ding’s empirical parameter D _fret2, which considers the effect of resultant frictional work on fretting fatigue life. The results are compared with traditional critical plane-based methods like Smith-Watson-Topper (SWT) and Fatemi-Socie (FS). Observing high load-factor values corresponding to material yielding, non-linear material models are considered to account for possible plastic shakedown/ratcheting phenomenon. Overall good experimental correlation is observed for all three fatigue initiation methods, within a ±3N scatter band. The advantage of deviatoric strain amplitude-based parameter over SWT and FS methods is that it does not require critical plane-based calculations and, hence, is computationally more efficient. The effect of wear on fretting fatigue is considered through two different techniques: progressive wear modeling and fretting-specific parameter. Under progressive wear modeling technique, Archard’s wear model is considered whereas Ding’s D _fret2 parameter is considered under fretting specific parameter. Since Ding’s D _fret2 parameter, considers the correction factor corresponding to actual frictional work, it predicts a better correlation than Archard’s wear model, which considers a single wear coefficient value for different load-stroke combinations.