Rapid determination of fretting fatigue limit by infrared thermography

This paper demonstrates the feasibility of infrared thermography to determine the so-called fretting fatigue limit. Fretting fatigue tests are performed on aluminum and steel specimens. The coupled fatigue and tangential loads are sequentially increased (block loading) whilst the normal load is kept constant for all blocks. The temperature data is processed and analyzed using a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) algorithm implemented in the commercial software Matlab. It is demonstrated that the second harmonic of the temperature signal can be linked to the specific loading block below which no or negligible damage is generated in the specimen. The stress amplitude of this block is considered to be a best estimate of the fretting fatigue limit. A constant amplitude fretting fatigue test with this stress amplitude confirmed that the specimen remains intact at 107 cycles