Determination and prediction of the fretting crack initiation: introduction of the (P,Q,N) representation and definition of a variable process volume

TL;DR

This paper investigates fretting crack initiation in 2024 aluminium alloy through experimental analysis and introduces a new variable process volume and (P,Q,N) representation to improve prediction accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a novel (P,Q,N) representation and a variable process volume for better prediction of fretting crack initiation thresholds.

Findings

Experimental determination of crack nucleation conditions.

Implementation of a variable process volume in models.

Enhanced prediction accuracy using the Smith-Watson-Topper criterion.

Abstract

In this work, the crack nucleation under fretting loading is investigated experimentally with a damage tolerant 2024 aluminium alloy. A new method is introduced to determine its condition with respect to all loading parameters including the number of fretting cycles. Further work deals with the prediction of this threshold using the Smith-Watson-Topper criterion. New developments are presented, in particular a process volume of variable size is introduced in the computations of the fretting crack initiation.