Issue 33

D. A. Hills et alii, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 33 (2015) 61-66; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.33.08 61 Focussed on characterization of crack tip fields Fretting in complete contacts - the use of Williams’ solution D. A. Hills, R. Flicek University of Oxford, UK david.hills@eng.ox.ac.uk , robert.flicek@eng.ox.ac.uk A BSTRACT . Williams’ solution may be used to characterize the corners of ‘complete’ fretting contacts. Here we look at the practicalities of conducting fretting tests using a range of different kinds of apparatus and the kind of results they can reveal of practical relevance to establishing a fretting database. K EYWORDS . Fretting, complete-contacts; Williams’ solution. I NTRODUCTION t the Second IJFatigue & FFEMS Joint Workshop held in 2013, in Malaga (Spain), we developed quite extensively a framework for understanding the fretting fatigue of complete contacts, using Williams’ solution to characterize the local behaviour [1]. This can sometimes be quite a complicated process, as the stress intensity contributions from mode I and mode II loading may change sign, giving rise to local separation, and there are the competing non-linear local effects of slip (giving rise to fretting damage) and plasticity (giving rise to crack nucleation) [2,3]. For background material, these two papers should be consulted. They give, first, detailed consideration to length scales; all notch asymptotes subject to combined-mode loading have an internal length scale, even if the notch is semi-infinite extent. This is the quantity we have designated d o , and is defined as 1 0 I II II I K d K     (1) where K I , K II are the mode I, mode II generalized stress intensity factors respectively, and λ I , λ II are the corresponding Williams’ exponents [1]. Observation points nearer to the contact corner than d o are mode I dominated, whilst those further away are either mode II dominated or may be subject to the influence of higher order terms in the series (in which case the field is not ‘small scale’ in character). There are two non-linear local effects, both forms of slip. First, there is the process zone within which non-linear effects give rise to the accumulation of damage, which is wholly analogous to the process zone at the root of a sharp V-notch. Secondly, there is the possibility of frictional slip (fretting itself), which clearly causes at least some local damage including surface finish degradation. If the process zone envelopes the frictional slip extent, we would say that the contact corner is ‘notch-like’ (and this remark applies a fortiori if the contact corner is actually adhered). In contrast, if the slip zone envelopes the process zone, we would argue that fretting damage is likely to be very important in controlling the strength of the contact corner. In this paper, we want to take a more practical look at what these observations tell us about the properties of various fretting tests which are widely used, and what the range of test parameters should be so as to obtain the maximum useful output from the tests. It should be recalled that the notch-root generalized stress intensity factors act as a ‘filter’, and that, whatever the actual loading in the experiment, the locally experienced stresses can ‘see’ only the K I ,K II fields. Also, different types of tests probe different regions of K I , K II space. So, in general terms, normal loading drives the state of A