Voids as stress relievers and a palliative in fretting

Abstract

AbstractThere are several procedures used to increase fatigue life of components suffering from fretting, certain of which involve the modification of the surface material properties or the generation of compressive residual stresses near the surfaces in contact. Moreover, relatively little attention has been paid to the situation in which the contact pair stiffness is modified by changing the geometry of the components. The present paper describes an analysis of the possible beneficial effects on the fretting life of introducing voids inside the material of the components under fretting conditions. From a 3D perspective, this manufacturing characteristic is difficult to achieve using conventional techniques, although additive manufacturing could achieve this easily. A numerical analysis of a typical cylindrical contact configuration in fretting is simulated, with the novelty of introducing circular holes beneath the half‐plane surface. These holes change the contact pair stiffness, leading to a decrease in the surface contact stress field.