The phenomenon of fretting fatigue occurring in component connections represents a major challenge in the service life assessment of components from the current point of view. The reason for this is a tribological stress component in the contact surfaceof the components, which prevails in addition to the obligatory pure fatigue stress. Depending on the material and the characteristics of the tribological parameters, the fretting fatigue strength can be less than 20% of the pure material strength. As a result, components subjected to fretting fatigue stress, which were designed on the basis of established strength parameters, fail unexpectedly at an early stage. Depending on the area of application, this can result in serious personal injury, for example.
In order to counter the problem described, a calculation method for taking into account fretting fatigue in steel-steel contacts was developed in several years of research work at IKAT. This is based on local stresses, which enables the calculation of arbitrary component geometries. The fretting fatigue strength decrease is taken into account by empirically determined fretting factors. Implementation of these factors in the proven standard FKM guideline allows the research results to be used in a user-friendly manner.
The research results have been published in the renowned journal „International Journal of Fatigue“ and are now available online (DOI: 10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2022.107217) as well as in print in the 165 issue from December 2022.
Publication of research results in the field of fretting fatigue
Categories: News-Englisch