A computationally efficient method for the prediction of fretting wear in practical engineering applications

Y Kong,C.J Bennett,C.J Hyde

doi:10.1016/j.triboint.2021.107317

Abstract

A method for simulating fretting wear using the Modified Simplex Method for a contact solution has been developed. The initial separation between two contacting bodies was used as an input to solve the contact force distribution. An average cycle pressure distribution was calculated for the stationary surface over a displacement cycle. The wear depth was calculated for each body based on the modified Archard’s wear equation using the force distributions and the gross sliding distance. The initial separation was updated and the force distribution was solved for the next iteration. Methods for optimizing computational time are presented using a combination of linear jumping and adaptive cycle jumping for the wear depths, and an interpolation weighting method for reducing the grid size. It was found that computational time can be reduced by at least 98% compared with other simulation methods, making this method a viable tool for design. Fretting wear scars and depths were simulated for a cylinder on flat in contact and were found to agree with experimental results and Finite Element modeling results from previous literature. To show the capability of the fretting wear model, three practical applications were simulated: automotive seat sliding rails, steel wire ropes for industrial applications and steam generator tubes for nuclear power stations.

Highlights

Fretting wear occurs due to small oscillatory relative movement between contacting surfaces under a normal load
A numerical modeling methodology has been developed for pre dicting fretting wear and cylinder on flat geometry cases from previous literature has been used for validation
A contact model using the Modified Simplex Method was used in conjunction with the modified Archard wear equation to predict 3D fretting wear scars, wear depths and wear volumes

Summary

Introduction

Fretting wear occurs due to small oscillatory relative movement between contacting surfaces under a normal load. There are two running statuses of fretting wear: gross-slip, where slip occurs across the whole region of contact; and partial slip, where there is no relative movement, or ‘stick’ in parts of the region of contact. There are several factors that influence fretting wear behavior [14], which includes contact geometry, normal loading, sliding ampli tude and frequency; many authors have investigated the influence of these by a series of fretting tests [15,16,17]. For life prediction and design optimization of components, fretting experiments are not always ideal. These are very involved, require many tests and a high number of cycles, and are time consuming. Numerical modeling is vital to the understanding of fretting wear, as a collection of test cases can be pre dicted and compared, and the evolution of fretting wear can be investigated

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