A parametric investigation on the fretting fatigue behaviour of heat treated Al 6061-T6 under rotating bending phenomena

This research investigated the effect of variable fretting parameters on bending fatigue behaviour of heat-treated Al-Mg-Si alloy (Al 6061-T6). Bulk stress, contact pressure, pad geometry, and locations were chosen as variable parameters to measure its consequence on fatigue life. A developed FEM model justified the experimental observation. It observed that, within the lower bulk stress range, fretting action decreases the fatigue life of Aluminium alloy significantly than the plain one. However, this difference almost vanishes at higher-order loading as well as stress in comparison to plain fatigue. Contact pressure and stress distribution along the contact path and non-filleted-edge suggest about the importance of safety design over the fretting zones. The flat on cylinder contacts was found as detrimental at higher-order contact pressure while cylinder on cylinder one reduces notably at low contact pressure. Fuzzy logic, a soft computing technique was implemented to predict the fretting fatigue as well as the effect of pad location from surface graphs. Nevertheless, catastrophic rupture followed the aspect of fretting loading parameter that showed fretting not only affects in quantity but also the quality of the fatigue behaviour of Al 6061-T6.