Finite Element Study of the Effect of Load Sequence on the Fretting Wear

Understanding the effect of load sequence is important in the context of a blade-disc dovetail joint in an aero-engine and many other such applications where, the mating surfaces undergo fretting wear under variable slip amplitude loading conditions. In the present work, a two-dimensional finite element analysis is carried out for a cylinder-on-plate configuration. The cylinder is modeled as deformable whereas the plate is modelled as rigid. An incremental wear modelling algorithm is used to model the wear of cylindrical pad while the plate is assumed as un-worn. This simulates a practical scenario where, generally one of the mating surfaces is sufficiently hardened or an interfacial harder/sacrificial element is inserted to restrict the wear to only one of the surfaces. A Fortran-based ABAQUS® subroutine UMESHMOTION is used to simulate the wear profile for the cylinder. A constant extrapolation technique is used to simulate 18000 cycles of fretting. The finite element analysis results are validated with the analytical solutions and literature data. The fretting wear modelling is carried out for two different slip amplitudes viz., 25 μm and 150 μm, to simulate the low and high slip amplitude loading respectively. Two blocks of alternate low and high slip amplitudes are applied to understand the influence of load sequence. Important contact parameters viz., contact pressure, contact stresses and contact slip are extracted. A comparison is made between the low-high and high-low load sequence based on the contact tractions and worn out profiles.