The mechanics and tribology of fretting fatigue with application to riveted lap joints

Fretting is the synergistic combination of wear, corrosion, and fatigue damage mechanisms driven by the partial slip of contacting surfaces. The surface microslip and near-surface contact stresses associated with fretting can lead to severe reduction in service lifetimes of contacting components as diversified as bearings, turbine blades and mechanically-fastened joints, both structural and biological. This tribologically induced degradation has come under close scrutiny by those responsible for maintaining aging fleets of both commercial and military aircraft.;Thus a critical need exists for predicting fretting crack nucleation in riveted aluminum. aircraft joints. Fulfilling this need requires characterizing both the near-surface mechanics and intimately-related tribology of fretting. To this end, a well characterized experimental setup has been developed to generate carefully controlled and monitored fretting contacts to investigate the nature of the near-surface conditions. Included in this investigation were in-situ observations of the fretting contact stress field via a non-invasive thermal imaging technique and a characterization of the evolution of friction under partial slip conditions. With specific qualitative and quantitative understanding of these near-surface conditions, a series of fretting fatigue experiments have been conducted to validate a mechanics-based model for predicting fretting fatigue crack nucleation.;Finally, efforts have been directed toward extending this understanding of fretting crack nucleation to riveted aircraft structure through modeling of the riveting process and a related experimental program designed to link riveting process parameters and fretting damage in single-lap joint structures. This work focuses specifically on determination of the residual stresses induced during rivet installation and the morphological characterization of fretting fatigue damage in the riveted test specimens manufactured under controlled conditions.