In this study, fretting wear in riveted lap joints of aluminium alloy plates was investigated. For the fretting test, 6061-T6 aluminium alloy plates, which are widely used in aircraft construction, and blind rivets were used. Experiments were carried out using a computer controlled Instron testing machine. Fretting surface roughness, microhardness was investigated by metallographic techniques and scanning electron microscopy.

Tensile load cycles in the riveted lap joint were found to cause damage to all surfaces. Two contact surfaces where friction occurs were investigated. The contact surface of the lower plate with the upper plate, and the contact surface of the lower plate with the rivet head. As load and cycles increased, fretting scars and surface roughness increased.

Consequently, it has been determined that fretting damages occur between the contact surface of the plates and between the plate and the rivet contact surface.

Very high cycle bending fatigue behaviors of FV520B steel under fretting wear were studied by the ultrasonic fatigue technique. The specimen system for ultrasonic bending testing was designed and the stress distribution of fatigue specimen was obtained by finite element method. The microstructure of FV520B steel was characterized by means of optical microscope, transmission electron microscope, and energy-dispersive spectroscope. The P–S–N curve was drawn based on fatigue data. The micromorphology characteristics of fretting wear surface and fracture surface for fatigue specimen were observed. The results indicate that the microstructure of FV520B steel is mainly composed of lath martensite, ferrite, and precipitation particles, with some randomly distributed internal inclusions. The P–S–N curve shows that there exists no “conventional fatigue limit” and the fatigue life decreases continuously with the increase of applied stress Smax. Most of fatigue cracks are observed on fractography and initiate from the overlap region of fretting wear zone and stress concentration zone. The fracture failure for tested specimen is ascribed to fretting wear and bending vibration fatigue.

The effect of annealing on the tribological and corrosion properties of Al–12Si samples produced by selective laser melting (SLM) is evaluated via sliding and fretting wear tests and weight loss experiments and compared to the corresponding material processed by conventional casting. Sliding wear shows that the as-prepared SLM material has the least wear rate compared to the cast and heat-treated SLM samples with abrasive wear as the major wear mechanism along with oxidation. Similar trend has also been observed for the fretting wear experiments, where the as-prepared SLM sample displays the minimum wear loss. On the other hand, the acidic corrosion behavior of the as-prepared SLM material as well as of the cast samples is similar and the corrosion rate is accelerated by increasing the heat treatment temperature. This behavior is due to the microstructural changes induced by the heat treatment, where the continuous network of Si characterizing the as-prepared SLM sample transforms to isolated Si particles in the heat-treated SLM specimens. This shows that both the wear and corrosion behaviors are strongly associated with the change in microstructure of the SLM samples due to the heat-treatment process, where the size of the hard Si particles increases, and their density decreases with increasing annealing temperature.

Les roues aubagées assemblées peuvent posséder beaucoup de zones de contact. À cause des déplacements relatifs aux interfaces, l’usure par fretting est possible, elle affecte négativement la durée de vie de la structure. Il existe des méthodes pour prédire l’usure par fretting dans une analyse quasi-statique. Cependant elles ne permettent pas de prédire tous les phénomènes observés dans les attaches d’aubes de systèmes industriels. Un traitement numérique de l’usure par fretting sous chargement vibratoire est proposé. La méthode est basée sur la DLFT (Dynamical Lagrangian Frequency Time method). Elle permet de modéliser un contact unilatéral avec la loi de frottement de Coulomb. L’idée de base est de séparer le temps en deux échelles : l’échelle lente pour les phénomènes tribologiques et une échelle rapide pour la dynamique. Sur un nombre choisi de périodes l’état est supposé stationnaire et les variables sont décomposées en séries de Fourier. Des investigations numériques, sur roues aubagées avec une interface de contact avec frottement, illustrent les performances de la méthode et montrent le couplage entre dynamique et tribolologie.