Fretting fatigue of 2XXX series aerospace aluminum alloys

Fretting is a wear mechanism that occurs at the contact region between two materials subject to minute cyclic relative motion. Fretting causes the initiation of surface cracks within the first few thousand cycles, which in the presence of a fatigue stress, grow to cause material failure approximately 10 to 100 times earlier than expected under standard fatigue conditions. Examples of fretting fatigue have been seen in joints in aircraft, and the aerospace industry acknowledges the possibility of catastrophic failure from this mechanism. Improvements in a material's resistance to fretting would benefit aluminum alloys in aerospace applications.; This research investigated the effect of microstructural properties on the fretting response in 2XXX series aerospace aluminum alloys. Fretting wear and fretting fatigue tests were conducted to determine the influence of slip characteristics, alloy purity, grain orientation and yield strength on fretting crack initiation and growth. Crack length measurements and micrographs of the fretting indicated there was no significant difference in the fretting response of these alloys based on their microstructural characteristics.; Results showed that fretting initiated cracks in the first 1–8% of the life while standard fatigue initiation took around 90% of the life. This reduction in initiation resulted in a shorter life under fretting conditions. Additionally, fretting normalized the initiation time in all alloys which eliminated any intrinsic initiation resistance. The alloys with the highest stress-life (S-N) fatigue properties exhibiting a greater reduction in fatigue strength under fretting conditions. The fretting stresses appeared to influence the crack growth to a distance below the surface of approximately 17μm under fretting fatigue conditions, after which some cracks changed direction and propagated under the influence of the fatigue stress. Under fretting wear conditions, the cracks tended to arrest at a depth of 8–15μm.; In addition, the fretting stresses and crack lengths were incorporated into the crack growth program AFGROW. The fretting fatigue life predictions compared favorably to experimental results.