Failure analysis of dovetail assemblies under fretting load

Abstract: 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 40–60% 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 finite element method (FEM); the other is finding suitable parameters to correlate with fretting fatigue life to improve predictive accuracy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]