Fretting fatigue behaviour of hard anodizing coated 2014‐T6 aluminium alloy with dissimilar mating materials under plane bending loading

The effect of hard anodizing coated 2014‐T6 aluminium alloy test samples with dissimilar mating materials on fretting fatigue was investigated. Fretting fatigue configuration involved bridge‐type pads on the flat specimen. Bridge‐type pads were made of AISI 4140 steel. All the fretting fatigue tests were conducted under plane bending loading with a stress ratio of R=?1. Coated and uncoated specimens were compared for microhardness, surface roughness, tangential force. The specimens were tested under both plain fatigue and fretting fatigue loading at ambient temperature. Micrographs obtained from scanning electron microscope showed that hard anodizing coating had tiny cracks through the thickness of the anodized layer. The hardness of hard anodized coating was higher than that of uncoated specimens and they also exhibited lower tangential force. However, the fretted region of the hard anodizing coated specimens was rougher than that of uncoated samples and despite lower tangential forces, fatigue lives of hard anodizing coated samples were inferior to those of uncoated samples. As the hard anodizing coating had pre‐existing tiny cracks and tension residual stress, cracks propagated from the hard anodizing coating through the interface into the substrate. We conclude that these may be the main reasons for inferior fretting fatigue lives compared with uncoated samples.