Fretting fatigue behavior of Al7075-T6 at sub-zero temperature

In some fretting fatigue applications, such as aero industry, the temperature may drop well below −50 °C Fretting fatigue behavior of aluminum alloy Al7075-T6 is investigated at temperatures of 24, 0, −25 and −50 °C in this work. The results show that (i) normal fatigue life increases considerably at sub-zero temperatures up to around 85% for low working stresses and reduces to about 40% for higher working stresses; (ii) fretting fatigue life at sub-zero temperatures rises significantly up to around 220% for low working stresses and reduces to about 50% for higher working stresses; (iii) ultimate strength of material changes from −15% to 15% under the fretting fatigue test conditions; and finally (iv) some parameters such as mechanical properties and fatigue behavior of material at low temperatures, contact load relaxation, crack closure, oxidation and some unknown sources can be thought to be responsible for fretting fatigue behavior of Al7075-T6 at sub-zero temperatures.     

Modification of fretting fatigue behavior of AL7075-T6 alloy by the application of titanium coating using IBED technique and shot peening

In this work, improvement in fretting fatigue life of AL7075-T6 has been investigated by titanium surface coating using ion-beam-enhanced deposition (IBED) technique and shot peening. From the experiments, the following conclusions were derived: (i) Shot peening increased the fretting fatigue life up to 350%. (ii) Titanium coating increased the fatigue life up to 100% with respect to virgin specimens for low working stresses, while it reduced the fatigue life at higher working stresses significantly. (iii) Titanium coating+shot peening increased the fatigue life up to 130% with respect to the virgin specimens for low working stresses, while it reduced the fatigue life at higher working stresses significantly. The highest and the lowest increase in coefficient of friction are obtained for virgin and shot-peened+titanium-coated specimens, respectively. IBED surface-modification technique is not successful in reducing fretting fatigue, except at low stresses.     

An Investigation into the Effect of Normal Load Frequency on Fretting Fatigue Behavior of Al7075-T6

Most previous studies on fretting fatigue have been accomplished under constant normal loading and less attention has been paid to cyclic normal loading. An innovative test apparatus was specially designed and manufactured for fretting fatigue tests under cyclic loading in this work and the fretting fatigue behavior of Al7075-T6 was investigated at different normal load frequencies. A finite element model was developed to study the effect of normal load frequency on the contact stress distribution. It was found that the cyclic normal load has a more damaging effect on fretting fatigue life compared to constant normal load, particularly at lower frequencies. The results showed that at the normal load frequency of f = 1 Hz, fatigue life decreased by 52% in the high cycle fatigue regime and 28% in the low cycle fatigue regime. The experimental results also indicated that at the normal load frequency of 80 Hz, the fretting fatigue life converged to its corresponding life under constant normal load condition. The fracture surface and the fretting area of the specimens were examined using both optical and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The experimental observations showed that the dominant partial slip condition with a wider slip region compared to constant normal loading, severe delamination, and higher oxidation rate due to the normal load release at each cycle, are the most important reasons for significant reductions in fretting fatigue life, under cyclic normal loading, especially for low normal load frequencies.     

Development of a contact compliance method to detect the crack propagation under fretting

Partial slip fretting conditions are classically known to favor contact crack nucleation and crack propagation. Considered as a plague for modern industries, numerous theoretical researches have been conducted during the past two decades to predict such fretting damage. However, a review of last few years critically outlines the need of precise and in-situ experiments to qualify and quantify the given models. To palliate such aspect, an original approach which consists in following the contact stiffness evolution as an indicator of the fretting cracking phenomena, has been developed. Applied for an aluminium/steel contact, it demonstrates that the incipient crack propagation is related to a discontinuous decrease of the contact stiffness. Based on this online analysis, a fretting cracking endurance parameter has been extrapolated to develop fast and low cost fretting cracking endurance chart. A FEM analysis has been performed in an attempt to formalize the given experiments.