Finite element analysis of fretting wear considering variable coefficient of friction

Fretting wear is a kind of material damage in contact surfaces caused by microrelative displacement between two bodies. It can change the profile of contact surfaces, resulting in loosening of fasteners or fatigue cracks. Finite element method is an effective method to simulate the evolution of fretting wear process. In most studies of fretting wear, the coefficient of friction was assumed to be constant to simplify model and reduce the difficulty of solving. However, fretting wear test showed that the coefficient of friction was a variable related to the number of fretting cycles. Therefore, this paper introduces the coefficient of friction as a function of the number of fretting cycles in numerical simulation. A wear model considering variable coefficient of friction is established by combining energy consumption model and adaptive grid technique. The nodes of contact surfaces are updated through the UMESHMOTION subroutine. The effects of constant coefficient of friction and variable coefficient of friction on fretting wear are analyzed by comparing the wear amount under different loading conditions. The results show that when compared with coefficient of friction model, fretting wear is obviously affected by variable coefficient of friction and the variable coefficient of friction model has a larger wear volume when the fretting is in partial slip condition and mixed slip condition. In gross slip condition, the difference of wear volume between variable coefficient of friction model and coefficient of friction model decreases with the increase in the displacement amplitudes.