Abstract
Predicting the failure life of automated manufacturing systems can reduce overall downtime, maintenance costs, and total plant operation costs. Therefore, there is a growing interest in fatigue failure mechanisms as the safety or service life assessment of manufacturing systems becomes an important issue. In particular, fretting fatigue is caused by repeated tangential stresses that are generated by friction during small amplitude oscillatory movements or sliding between two surfaces pressed together in intimate contact. Previous studies in fretting fatigue have observed size effects related to contact width such that a critical contact width exists where there is drastic change in the fretting fatigue life. However, most of them are the two-dimensional finite element analyses based on the plane strain assumption. The purpose of this study is to investigate the contact size effects on the three-dimensional finite element model of a finite width of a flat specimen and a cylindrical pad exposed to fretting fatigue. The contact size effects were analyzed by means of the stress and strain averages at the element integration points of three-dimensional finite element model. This study shows that the fretting fatigue life of manufacturing systems can be predicted by three-dimensional finite element analysis based on SWT critical plane model.