Analysis of Displacement-Controlled Fretting Between a Hemisphere and a Flat Block in Elasto-Plastic Contacts

This work employs a three-dimensional (3D) finite element analysis (FEA) to investigate the fretting metallic contact between a deformable hemisphere and a deformable flat block. Fretting is governed by displacement-controlled action where the materials of the two contacting bodies are set to have identical properties; studied first is steel-on-steel and then copper-on-copper. At contact onset, a normal interference (indentation) is applied, which is then followed by transverse cyclic oscillations. A large range of coefficients of friction (COFs) is imposed at the interface. The results show that the maximum von Mises stress is confined under the contacting surface for small COFs; however, that maximum reaches the contacting surface when the COFs are sufficiently large. It is also shown that fretting under sufficiently large COFs forms large plastic strains in “ring” like patterns at the contacting surfaces. Junction growth is found where the contacting region is being stretched in the direction of the fretting motion. At large COFs, pileups show up at the edges of the contact. The fretting loops of the initial cycles are found along with the total work invested into the system. At certain interference, there exists a certain COF, which results in the largest work consumption. The magnitude of the COF is found to produce either partial slip (prone for fretting fatigue) or gross slip (prone for fretting wear). A scheme of normalization is proposed, and it is shown to be effective for the two said materials that have vastly different material properties. Hence, the normalized results may well characterize a range of contact scales (from micro to macro) of various ductile material pairs that behave in an elastic–plastic manner with strain hardening.