Engineering Failure Analysis 26 (2012) 381396

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Engineering Failure Analysis

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/engfailanal

Review

Failure analysis of dovetail assemblies under fretting load

Da-Sheng Wei , Shan-Hu Yuan, Yan-Rong Wang
School of Jet Propulsion, Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Beijing 100191, PR China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

a b s t r a c t
Fretting wear and subsequent fatigue are the damage processes caused by micro slip under high cycle fatigue (HCF) loading between contacting structural members. Fretting fatigue has become recognized as a major failure mode in aircraft, which can reduce the life of a structure by as much as 4060% under certain conditions. There are two keys to evaluating the fretting fatigue life of dovetail assemblies: one is determining the high stress gradients at the edge of the contact zone under complex loading by means of numerical methods, especially the nite element method (FEM); the other is nding suitable parameters to correlate with fretting fatigue life to improve predictive accuracy. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Article history: Received 12 January 2012 Received in revised form 9 June 2012 Accepted 21 June 2012 Available online 31 August 2012 Keywords: Dovetail assemblies Contact Fretting fatigue Life prediction High gradient stress

Contents 1. 2. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Two keys in the analysis of fretting failure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1. Numerical calculation of fretting contact stresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2. Fretting fatigue test and life prediction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1. Fretting fatigue specific parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2. Multi axial fatigue parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3. Methods based on fracture mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Several important factors on fretting fatigue life and corresponding treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.1. Distinguishing the propagation life from the total life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2. Effect of geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3. Effect of loading ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4. Effect of coefficient of friction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Study on fretting fatigue performance of dovetail in the fan of aero engine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382 383 383 385 386 387 387 389 389 391 391 392 392 395 395 395

3.

4. 5.

Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dasheng.w@163.com (D.-S. Wei). 1350-6307/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2012.06.007

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1. Introduction Dovetails, gears, and splines have been widely used in aero engines where fretting is an important failure mode due to loading variation and vibration during long-time service [1,2]. Failure caused by fretting fatigue becomes a prominent issue when service time continues beyond 4000 h. In some cases, micro slip at the edge of a contact zone can reduce the life by as much as 4060% [3]. For example, failure due to fretting in compressor/fan dovetail assemblies manufactured from titanium alloys are often observed. Many aero engine companies such as Rolls-Royce always focus on the solution to the fretting problem. In fact, fretting fatigue has been one of the cost sources relating to HCF [4]. With the increase of service time and reliability requirements of aero engine components, fretting fatigue should be paid more attention. There are two key issues in the analysis of fretting fatigue: one is solving contact stress accurately; the other is carrying out the fretting fatigue test and trying to nd a suitable life prediction method. The high stress gradients at the edge of contact zone are the basis of failure analysis of fretting fatigue, and it is a challenge to obtain the stresses accurately under complex loading history. Fatigue has always been a difcult and widely studied eld, and introducing fretting complicates it further. Thus, it is necessary to develop a suitable method to predict fretting fatigue life to satisfy engineering requirements. Several factors such as geometry, material elasticplastic behavior, load history, etc., affect fretting fatigue and make it difcult to study. Therefore, researchers always focus on specic key factors affecting fretting fatigue life. Obtaining an accurate solution for contact stresses, analyzing damage mechanisms of fretting fatigue, and nding other key factors are emphasized in modern research, especially under complex loading (vibrating load on blades and the low cycle fatigue (LCF) loads on the whole rotor). Geometry is another important factor affecting contact stress and fretting behaviors. Reasonable structural geometry is essential to reduce contact stress and inhibit fretting fatigue. The concept of fretting was proposed in the 1920s, however as an engineering problem in aviation, fretting studies started in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the last 1015 years, fretting fatigue has been paid more attention and studied by means of numerical simulation and experimental verication. Many engineering materials are chosen for fretting studies: carbon steel was used in early investigations of the initiation mechanism of fretting cracks [5], while titanium alloys (TC5 [6], Ti17 [7]), especially Ti6Al4V [8], have been the primary concern in recent studies; Aluminum alloys (2024-T351 [9], 2X24-T351, 2X24-T39 [10] and 7075-T6 [11]), steel (NiCrMo-V [12] and AISI 52,100 [13]) and nickel-base super alloys (In718 [14]) have also been studied. There may be as many as 50 factors [15] that can affect the fretting behavior of materials, in which contact pressure, coefcient of friction, slip amplitude, and cyclic axial stress are relatively important. Therefore different emphasis is chosen in different studies such as processing technology, micro structure, geometry, loading conditions and so on. Surface treatments such as shot-peen have been shown to improve the fretting performance, and the fretting life will increase signicantly due to residual compressive stress on the surface [16,17]. Except for shot-peen, coating the contact surface helps to delay appearance of the wear [18], and Golden and Shepard [4], and Golden et al. [19] used specimens with thin, hard, low-friction coatings (such as diamond-like carbon, DLC) with different surface treatment to study fretting behaviors. This indicates that surface residual compressive stresses with different depths would lead

Fig. 1. HCF and LCF loading: (a) on dovetail assemblies [26] and (b) on fretting specimen [21].

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to different lifetimes. Swalla et al. [20] studied the microstructure of Ti6Al4V alloy by using EBSD (element backscatter diffraction) and EDX (energy dispersive X-ray) to experiment with new fretting fatigue damage parameters. Geometry has great inuence on contact stress, for example, the contact length and rounded radii in rounded at-on-at, or the radii in cylinder-on-at, would change the pressure distribution on the contact surface [21,22]. For the contact of cylinder-on-at, size effects are an important research avenue, and there is a critical contact width, a0, which is dominated by the range of micro slip; tests with contact width great than the critical contact width had relatively short fatigue lives [23]. McVeigh et al. [24] used the quasi-analytical formula and FEM solution to study the effect of wear on the distribution of contact stress, and it showed that the contact interface was no longer in ideal, smooth condition after wear, which will lead to the uctuation of contact stress along the interface. McVeigh and Farris [25] and Szolwinski et al. [26] studied the effects of HCF loading on fretting fatigue; the former focused on the FE solution of fretting contact stresses under complex loading, which was in good agreement with the Mindlins solution, and the latter focused on studying the effect of HCF loading on fretting fatigue life; it was similar to Namjoshis study in [27]. In summary, it is clear that the calculation of contact stresses and prediction of fretting life are two keys in fretting failure analysis, which are also the emphasis in the following section.

2. Two keys in the analysis of fretting failure 2.1. Numerical calculation of fretting contact stresses Contact mechanics is an important branch of computational mechanics, and obtaining contact stress on an interface is the basis of fretting life prediction. It is quite difcult to determine the contact stresses accurately between a blade and disk because of the complex geometry and loading. The dovetail assemblies are always subject to centrifugal forces (LCF loading P) and vibrational loads (HCF loading DQ) shown in Fig. 1a. According to the loading, fretting specimens with a contact pad are designed and used widely in many studies. Fig. 1b shows the loading on the specimen: r0 is bulk stress, P is pressure, Q is fretting load which is usually perpendicular to the load P. Different fretting states can been obtained by changing the ratio of Q/P, which will clearly effect on the shear stress in the contact zone [21,28]. Analytical and quasi-analytical formulas based on the Hertzian solution were used to calculate contact stresses [24,26,29] and form the code of CAPRI [30], which was developed for the new edition of CAFDEM [31] to analyze contact stresses between different materials. For some non-conforming contact, solutions from the quasi-analytical formula were always veried by FEM [32]. FEM is an effective and feasible way to obtain the fretting stress and strain under complex loading conditions that require the introduction of elasticplasticity [33]. Currently, general FEM programs have been wildly used in contact analysis of dovetail or fretting specimens such as ANSYS [34] and ABAQUS [11,15,25,35]. The boundary element method (BEM) has also been applied for contact stress analysis. For example, the BEM program of BEASY is used to study the contact between a rail and the wheels of a train [36]. BEM appears advantageous in analysis of crack propagation due to adaptive mesh division. Fadag et al. [15] calculated the crack propagation life of a fretting specimen by using BEM program FRANC2D.

Fig. 2. FE model of fretting specimen for calculation of contact stress.

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The fretting fatigue specimen was used in previous studies [9,25,29], which calculated that the dangerous point was contact point b shown in Fig. 1b on the contact face. In these simulations, the effect of the vibrational load Q on fretting contact stresses was controlled by the ratio of Q/lP [21,26]. For conditions requiring complex calculations, FEM is often used to establish the numerical model. For example, complex boundary conditions were considered in FEM models established by Lykins et al. [35] and Fadag et al. [15]: the former focused on crack initiation by using a cylindrical fretting pad, while the latter focused on crack propagation by using a at pad with a rounded edge. Fig. 2 shows these force boundary conditions, which were pressure P, fretting load Q, and bulk stress r on the fretting specimen. The mesh division is key in contact analysis by means of FEM, especially when the contact appears between a 90 wedge pad or a at one with rounded edge as the fretting specimen. These shapes lead to an obvious stress concentration for which the numerical solution is dependent on the density of FE mesh. When solving engineering problems using FEM, the mesh density plays a critical role that can affect the results: Wang et al. [3739] investigated the effect of mesh density on impellers stresses and utilized suitable number of elements to stabilize them; Shokrieh and Raee [40] also showed that the stress and tip deection of a wind turbine are strongly dependent on the number of elements; Gonzlez-Herrera and Zapatero [41] showed that the minimum element size around the crack tip presents a great effect on the value of crack closure stress of the compact tension specimen. Therefore, a convergence analysis must be performed on the FE model, especially in the contact analysis between blade and disk, and a suitable number of elements can be obtained by increasing the mesh density in a step-by step manner.

Fig. 3. FE Mesh of dovetail: (a) the coarse mesh used in early study [34] and (b) the ne mesh in recent study [42].

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It could be estimated that a 3D mesh with approximately 1,00,000 elements would be needed in order to resolve the local contact eld between sphere and plane [11]. Thus it is necessary to determine the suitable mesh density to obtain accurate contact stresses: McVeigh et al. [24] rened the mesh with approximately 700 elements along a contact length of 3 mm to get the peak stress, which had error to within 4% of the analytical solution. Fadag et al. [15] mentioned in the analysis of crack propagation of a fretting specimen that mesh size should be at most one tenth of the initial crack length. Furthermore, dovetail specimens are used to study fretting behavior. Though the fretting specimen reects the fretting behavior similar to dovetail assemblies and its testing is easy to be carried out, its geometry and loading appear to be quite different compared to dovetail assemblies subjected to the working loads of an aero engine. Therefore dovetail specimen calculations have also started to be given sufcient attention. Fig. 3 shows FE models to be improved to get high-precision solutions. Fig. 3a and b shows the coarse mesh used in early contact stress analysis and the ne mesh in recent research, respectively. Sinclair studied the contact stress of dovetail assemblies in literatures [4244], which indicated that there was a high stress gradient at the edge of blade/disk contact zone, and the solution precision of the mesh density should be paid close attention when using numerical methods such as FEM. It is obvious that low solution precision of fretting contact stresses would lead to low precision of life prediction. Sinclair used two-dimension models of dovetails to calculate the contact stress using ANSYS and found that mesh density would affect the numerical solution of high stress gradients. Furthermore, he established three-dimension models to investigate the effects of the conguration of the contact surface (with and without crowing) on contact stress, and found that a contact prole with crowing would improve stress distribution in contact zone [45,46]. It is clear that Sinclair had not incorporated vibrational loads into the analysis of contact stress, which is a key factor in fretting fatigue. Based on Sinclairs studies, Wei et al. [47] tried to calculate the elasticplastic contact stress and suggest the minimum mesh quantity to be used in the contact zone according to the analysis of convergence. Hammouda et al. [48] also carried out the elasticplastic analysis to obtain the cyclic curve of shear stressstrain. The evaluation of a blade/disk structure was carried out under a real working load. The contact problem shows obvious nonlinearities (e.g., material nonlinearity, geometric nonlinearity, etc.), which results in expensive calculation cost using FEM. In the case of a global model of a contacting blade/disk with ne element size, it is very time consuming to achieve a good level of convergence for contact results [49]. There is no doubt that a mesh ne enough to achieve an accurate contact solution would result in long computation time. So a sub-model [45,46,49] and a multi scale method [50] were used not only to maintain accuracy, but also to improve computational efciency. Another approach is to equate the three-dimensional contact problem to a two-dimensional one by means of geometry and loading equivalence [51]. 2.2. Fretting fatigue test and life prediction It is well known that experiments are the basis for studying the fretting fatigue life of materials and structures. Fig. 4 shows a typical fretting fatigue experimental setup. This system allows variation of the axial load on the fretting specimen, and the normal and tangential loads on fretting pads controlled by lateral and longitudinal springs, respectively [35]. The shapes of the fretting specimens were adopted in fretting tests as follows: sphere pad/at [52,53]; cylinder pad/at [9,15,25,52,54,55]; 90 wedge pad/at [55]; at pad with rounded edge/at [15,55]. As mentioned previously, the dovetail specimen has been used in fretting fatigue tests to substitute the typical fretting fatigue specimen. Golden and Calcaterra [57] used dovetail specimens with different contact angles (Fig. 5a shows a dovetail specimen with contact angle of 45) to study fretting fatigue life, and the results indicated that fretting fatigue life of a dovetail specimen will decrease with the increase of contact angle. Conner and Nicholas [58] used a similar specimens shown in Fig. 5b to study the effect of surface treatment on fretting fatigue. These two studies lead to the following observations: rstly, using a contact pad lead to a shorter contact length, which may reduce the fretting fatigue life and cause differences between the test and the actual structure; secondly, the vibration load was not introduced. Rajasekaran and Nowell [59] and Golden [60] designed different loading systems to achieve a combination of low-frequency large-amplitude cycles, and high-

Fig. 4. Typical fretting fatigue experimental setup and loading on specimen [35,56].

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Fig. 5. The dovetail specimens: (a) From Golden Calcaterra [57] and (b) From Conner and Nicholas [58].

frequency low-amplitude cycles, respectively. Additionally, except for the typical fretting and dovetail specimens, a C-specimen was created by Golden [31,61] to analyze the nature of fretting cracks in contact pads and measure the threshold load. Similar to conventional fatigue, fretting fatigue data are the basis of fretting fatigue life prediction. Based on the calculated parameters and experiment data, the methods of fretting fatigue life prediction can be classied into three groups.

2.2.1. Fretting fatigue specic parameters Fretting is a damage process caused by wear, corrosion, and fatigue, which is driven by micro slip at the contact surface under cyclic fretting contact stress [29], so micro slip is an important fretting parameter. The typical length of fretting contact is from 0.1 mm to 1.1 mm [62,63], and the micro slip is generally between 0.5 lm and 100 lm, such as the empirical values of 550 lm in [62], 25100 lm in [29], 1050 lm in [11] and 0.550 lm in [52]. Based on micro slip and fretting contact stress, Ciavarella and Demelio [64] summarized several parameters of fretting fatigue damage as follows: (1) Slip amplitude d: d is the relative tangential displacement of contacting particles during the cycle, which is similar to the strain amplitude in conventional fatigue. The parameter was only used in some early studies [63]. (2) Frictional energy dissipation parameter Q. The Parameter Q, which is also called F1 or fretting wear parameter [64], is given as

Q sd lrN d

where s is the shear force, d is the relative tangential displacement, l is the coefcient of friction, and rN is the normal stress.

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(3) Ruizs parameter G. Parameter G, which is also called F2 or fretting fatigue (FF) parameter, introduced by Ruiz et al. [65], empirically takes into account the evidence that cracks are more likely to develop in regions of tension rather than compression [64]. It can be described as

G Q rT sdrN lrN drT

where rT is the shear stress. When rT > 0, cracks initiated on the contact surface tend to propagate into the interior.

2.2.2. Multi axial fatigue parameter Under some conditions, fretting fatigue can be considered as fatigue with local stress concentrations. Then based on the calculated fretting stresses at positions with high stress gradients, multi axial fatigue parameters can be used in life prediction, which had already been performed in some studies [35,66]. (1) SmithWatsonTopper (SWT) parameter. Cofn [67] and Manson [68] proposed the relationship between the plastic strain range and fatigue life. The total strain-life equation is

D r0f 2Nf b 0f 2Nf c 2 E

Then the mean stress correction was introduced by Smith, et al. [69] to develop the SWT relationship

rmax

  r0f 2 D 2Nf 2b r0f 0f 2Nf bc 2 E

The multi axial SWT equation can be established by using the maximum normal stress on the critical plane rn,max instead of maximum tension stress rmax in the left hand side of Eq. (4). Szolwinsk and Farris [29] evaluated the fretting life of a specimen with a cylinder pad by introducing the maximum axial fretting stress into the SWT equation [9]

rmax rx fret r0 2p0 lQ =P r0

where rx is the maximum axial stress on the fretting pad, r0 is the maximum cyclic axial stress on the specimen, p0 is the maximum of Hertzian contact pressure, and l is the coefcient of friction. (1) FatemiSocie (FS) parameter. Fatemi and Socie [70] suggested a parameter combining the shear strain amplitude and maximum normal stress on the critical plane. The life equation is

ct k

rn;max
Sy

s0f
G

2Nf b0 c0f 2Nf c0

where ct is the shear strain amplitude, and rn,max is the maximum normal stress on the critical plane. The following parameters were used to correlate observed fretting lives in Lykinss et al. study [35]: the strain-life relationship, the maximum strain corrected for strain ratio effects, the maximum principal strain corrected for principal strain ratio effects, the SWT parameter, the SWT critical plane parameter, the FS critical plane parameter, and the Ruiz parameter. The results indicated that the maximum strain amplitude at the contact interface was an important parameter in predicting the life of fretting fatigue crack initiation. In addition to this, Lykins et al. [56] and Lee and Mall [71] experimented with the shear strain amplitude on the critical plane as a fretting parameter.

(1) Equivalent stress parameter. The advantage of the equivalent stress parameter is that it avoids the need to nd a critical plane on which fretting initiation occurs. Golden and Grandt [31] used the parameter to correlate the fretting fatigue initiation life and give the stress-life diagram of fretting fatigue, which was similar to the SN curve. The equivalent stress parameter can be written as

req 0:5Drpsu w rmax 1w

2.2.3. Methods based on fracture mechanics There is a high stress gradient at the edge of the contact zone of the fretting specimen, especially for a specimen with a 90 wedge pad or a at pad with a rounded edge. The elastic peak stress with a high gradient can be equivalent to a singular one at the crack tip of the double-edged cracked plate specimen as shown in Fig. 6 [72,73]. Surseh gave the derivation of the equivalence in [74]. The fracture mechanics method has already been used to predict the fretting fatigue life, which leads to the crack analogy method (CAM). Naboulsi [55] obtained the crack analogy fatigue (CAF) parameter-life curve, which is similar to SN curve and can be used to evaluate the fretting life. He then [75] developed the modied crack analogy method (MCAM) by introducing a geometry correction. Lindley [76] and Nicholas et al. [77] gave the fretting SN curve, but it was difcult to apply because of the lack of experimental data.

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Fig. 6. The analogy between contact bodies and cracked body: (a) a two-dimensional contact between 90 wedge pad and substrate [72] and (b) doubleedge cracked plate specimen [72].

Fig. 7. Two stages crack growth.

Due to the analogy, the propagation life can be used as the approximate value of the fretting fatigue life. The fretting fatigue crack growth process can be divided into two stages shown in Fig. 7 [52,72,78]: for stage I, a surface crack initiates under the inuence of contact loads at an angle U, which then grows until it reaches a critical distance, lc. For stage II, a mode I crack which is primarily governed by the uniform cyclic stress grows until it reaches a critical distance, hc. NI represents the propagation life in stage I, and NII represents the propagation life in stage II, then the total life N can be calculated as follows:

NI

Z
0

Ic

dl C I DK I m I

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NII

hc csin /

dl C II DK II mII

9 10

N NI NII

The crack initiation angle U and the critical distance lc are key factors in (8) and (9) since they can be obtained by calculating the stresses around the crack tip and the stress intensity factor (SIF) [52,72]. It is clear that the stress state of contact between a 90 wedge pad and substrate is similar to the singular stress around the crack tip. For the contact between a specimen and a at pad with a rounded edge, methods based on stress gradients have been used in [7981] and lead to the notch analogy method [82]. This is used as the mean stress along the critical depth to correlate the fretting life. Giummarra and Brockenbrough [10] has given the expression of mean stress as follows:

Drx

1 z

Z
0

Drx dz

11

Another approach is using the small crack propagation life as the approximation of the fretting fatigue life. Pre-cracks can be set at the position of peak stress to represent a defect on the contact surface [83], and then the small crack propagation law is used to calculate the propagation life. The following formula has been used in many studies [7,15,30] to calculate the propagation life of a small crack.

 P "  Q #  D K eff K eff da Kc In eB In dN K th K th K eff

12

Limited by the experimental technology, the combined experiment-numerical approach was used to calculate the fretting life [56] and to predict the path of crack propagation [84]. With the advancement of testing technology, researchers continue to try to nd micro-damage parameters [85,86]. 3. Several important factors on fretting fatigue life and corresponding treatment 3.1. Distinguishing the propagation life from the total life Life prediction methods (such as the multi axial fatigue prediction method) as mentioned previously only aim to determine initiation life, while the observed fretting life in testing consists of two parts: initiation life and propagation life. This is unlike the test data from a smooth bar specimen, in which propagation life can be neglected. In Lykins et al. study [35], the average crack propagation life based on the striation measurements was determined to be 11% of the total life, whereas the calculated value based on the Paris law was estimated to be 8% of the total life. Szolwinskis calculation in [9,29] indicated that the crack propagation life was 515% of the total life. Several methods can be used to distinguish the propagation life from the total life, i.e. to determine initial crack size of fretting crack propagation, which are listed as follows: (1) Szolwinski chose 1 mm as the depth of a semi-circular crack. In the study, it was shown that for a crack length of 1 mm and a half width contact size, it can be assumed that the applied remote stresses, not the contact stresses, dominate the propagation of the crack [29]. It is interesting that Szolwinski used the specimen width as the nal crack size to calculate the propagation life in [29], while only using the half specimen width in [9], but this has almost no effect on the results. Hutson [87] suggested that the long crack propagation law can be used for calculation when the initial crack size is larger than 50 lm.

Fig. 8. Plot of normal pressure, ap(x)/P, for a range of values of b/a [24].

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(2) The initial crack size can be determined according to measurements taken during testing. Lykins et al. [35] determined that crack initiation life in proportion to total life is about 90% based on striation measurements. In a subsequent study [56], Lykins et al. used an initial crack length of 380 lm, which is equivalent to the typical capability of using the nondestructive technique (NDT), which is able to detect a 760 380 lm semicircular crack. (3) The initial crack size also can be determined by the threshold of small crack propagation. The small crack or El Haddad parameter [88] had been used in fretting crack growth by Garcia and Grandt [7], Fadag et al. [15] and Nicholas et al. [77], which was dened as

l0

 2 1 K Ieffth p Y re

13

The corresponding small crack corrected threshold fatigue stress range is [7]

Fig. 9. FE meshes and stress solutions: (a) coarse mesh and (b) ne mesh and (c) contact stress distribution.

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Fig. 10. The trend of numerical solution due to mesh density.

Fig. 11. FE mesh of r tree attachment.

DK Ieffth Drth p pl l0

14

where re is the fatigue limit, Y is geometric correction factor, KIeffth is the effective long crack SIF threshold which was expressed in terms of ratio of SIF [15]. When l > l0, it is deemed a long crack, and is otherwise a short crack. For the C-specimens designed by Golden and Grandt in [31], a value of approximately 25 lm for l0 was calculated. In other words, for cracks smaller than l0, the material behavior is controlled by stress, and above l0, linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) can be used to predict crack growth [10,31]. 3.2. Effect of geometry A lot of researches have already proved that the geometry of the fretting pad, such as a sphere, cylinder, 90 wedge, or rounded at edge will obviously affect the distribution of contact stress and fretting fatigue life. Similarly, the geometry of a fretting specimen, such as its thickness and a dog-bone shape, is also an important factor [89]. According to the loading analysis in Fig. 1b, the distribution of contact stress with different ratios of b/a (stick length/contact length) are shown in Fig. 8. It should be noted that as b/a ? 0, the pressure prole approaches the Hertzian distribution [24]; as b/a ? 1, this represents the pressure coming from the contact between the 90 wedge and the substrate; when 0 < b/a < 1, this represents the pressure coming from the contact between the rounded edge at and the substrate. The analytical, quasi-analytical formula and FEM can be used to obtain the pressure distribution in Fig. 8. 3.3. Effect of loading ratio Strain/stress ratio is a very important factor when considering conventional fatigue life, and should be paid more attention in fretting fatigue. Lykins et al. [35] suggested using the Walker correction in fretting fatigue [90]

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max;R max 1 R m
The similar correction is used in calculating the propagation life [15,77,30]

15

DK Ieff K Imax 1 RL m

16

Additionally, fretting usually appears under combined LCF and HCF loading. The damage cumulation method can be used to investigate how combined loading affects fretting fatigue life [26]. Studies of [91] Naboulsi and Mall and [92] Jin and Lee indicated that linear damage cumulation would lead to a convenient calculation, while non-linear cumulation would lead to a more accurate result. 3.4. Effect of coefcient of friction Fretting stress states have been found to depend highly on the assumed coefcient of friction, l, which is very difcult to measure in any type of experimental setup. For example, for the dovetail xture in [19], it is only possible to measure the value once per test, and then only the static value can be determined. An assumed coefcient of friction was often used in calculation: the fretting fatigue life of 2024-T3 aluminium and SAE 1015 steel are calculated by using SWT parameter in [29], and it is obvious that different coefcients of friction (l = 0.5, 0.7, 0.9) result in different calculated life. Szolwinski pointed out that the value of the coefcient of friction is usually between 0.6 and 0.75 under fretting conditions, who then adopted l = 0.65 in the study of 2024-T351 aluminium in [9], l = 0.4 for Ti6Al4V in [24] and l = 0.45 for Ti6Al4V in [26]. Datsyshyn and Kadyra [6] and Ciavarella and Demelio [64] also used different coefcients of friction to calculate the SIF under fretting loading. These studies indicate that the coefcient of friction is a key factor in fretting analysis which is still difcult to determine accurately. 4. Study on fretting fatigue performance of dovetail in the fan of aero engine Studies indicate that there is an obvious difference between the working conditions of a blade/disk and the testing conditions of a fretting fatigue specimen. Therefore simulations of the fretting behavior of dovetail assemblies under working conditions were carried out in order to study fretting behaviors, which are listed as follows:

Fig. 12. Stress distribution of r tree attachment: (a) peak stress between different contact pairs and (b) analysis of convergence.

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393

Fig. 13. Different proles of contact surface: (a) arc/line and (b) interior arc/arc and (c) exterior arc/arc.

Firstly, elasticplastic stress analysis of a dovetail subjected to centrifugal force was accomplished by using a coarse mesh (shown in Fig. 9a) and a ne mesh (shown in Fig. 9b) [47,93]. Fig. 9c shows that high stress gradients occur near the edges of the contact zone of the dovetail (points A and B). It indicates that stresses converge at Mesh No. 4 according to the trend of the numerical solution shown in Fig. 10. It should be noted that when the relative error between two peak contact stresses is less than 5% using different mesh densities, it can be concluded that the stress solution is converging. Secondly, the stress distribution of a r tree attachment was studied under centrifugal and thermal loading by using the FE mesh shown in Fig. 11 [94]. Fig. 12a describes the stress distribution along different contact pairs. Fig. 12b give the relationship between solution and mesh density: for a dovetail attachment, about 450 elements along the contact zone should lead to numerical convergence, while for r tree attachment, about 1000 elements are needed.

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Fig. 14. The stress distributions on contact surface with different proles.

Fig. 15. Model of crack initiation of dovetail: (a) FE model of cracked body and (b) SIFs as function of angle.

Thirdly, the effects of critical geometrical parameters on the distribution of contact stresses were studied. These were the contact angle h, contact length L, llet radius R at the edge of contact zone [95], and the contact surface prole [93]. Different proles, such as arc/line, interior arc/arc and exterior arc/arc shown in Fig. 13ac, respectively, would lead to the different pressure distribution proles in Fig. 14. It indicates that arc/line and arc/arc contact proles would remove the high stress gradient at the edge of contact zone, and arc/arc would further reduce the contact stress. Fourthly, based on the contact stresses and SIFs of dovetail assemblies, a fracture mechanics approach is adopted to judge the crack initiation direction and the growth path [47,96]. Pre-cracks were set at point B shown in Fig. 15a to calculate the SIFs. Then the curve of SIFs-angle shown in Fig. 15b was used to determine the crack initiation direction. The minimum strain energy density criterion was used to judge the direction of crack propagation and the crack growth law was used to calculate the growth life.

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5. Conclusion The fretting fatigue is not only a fundamental scientic problem but also an engineering one. This is not a new question, but it is not well solved because of the many factors affecting it. Calculation of contact stress and fretting fatigue life prediction are the two key studies. Many studies have already revealed the fretting failure mechanism and adopted some techniques to restrain fretting from occurring. There are however still some deciencies: cyclic elasticplasticity of materials and vibrational loads should be taken into account for the calculation of the contact stress. It is useful to study the fretting behaviors of different contact proles, such as arc/line, arc/arc, etc. In addition to this and similar to conventional fatigue, fretting fatigue life prediction is always a critical issue in HCF, and nding suitable life parameters is undergoing continuous research. Acknowledgements This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China with No. 51105023 and also supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. References
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