Experimental fatigue testing of a fretting complete contact and numerical life correlation using X-FEM

In this work, a complete contact problem under fretting fatigue loading conditions is modelled using the extended finite element method (X-FEM). A series of fretting fatigue experiments were performed to correlate the experimental lives to the estimated lives obtained by means of the combination of an initiation–propagation life prediction approach and the numerical method X-FEM. In addition, the influence of the method used for evaluating the stress intensity factors (either numerical or analytical) on the total life estimation has been studied. The influence of different multiaxial fatigue criteria on the prediction of total life has also been ascertained. The results obtained by the combination of the McDiarmid and the Fatemi–Socie criteria for the initiation life estimation and X-FEM for predicting the propagation life tend to correlate well with the experimental results.