A literature review of palliatives for fretting fatigue

Under cyclic stress conditions contacting components can suffer differential strain which may result in reduced fatigue life; such a phenomenon is termed fretting fatigue. This review shows that the palliative treatments advanced are superficially contradictory. However, examination shows that in reality the success of a palliative is dependent upon the specific application. Assessing treatments against existing theory shows that the contradictions can be explained in a qualitative manner; the detailed behaviour is strongly dependent upon the stress fields arising from both the contact and the relative moment. More work is required to quantify such effects and the detailed way in which palliatives work. Nevertheless it is possible to divide fretting fatigue situations into groups where particular palliatives may be of benefit. Hence potentially useful treatments have been tabulated together with their probable route for providing alleviation, so that means of amelioration can be selected.