ABSTRACT
Fretting occurs in quasi-static joints or at surfaces in contact under low relative motion. It has been proven as one of the main sources of engineering structure failure. A great amount of fundamental fretting test investigations on several metals have shown that rapid crack nucleation and its early propagation is located in mixed fretting regime which is the most critical to service failure. The remedies for fretting cracking are proposed from the classical fretting test point of view. Occurrence of fretting in transmission lines is a typical fretting fatigue example in the electrical industry. Individual aluminium wire breakages due to inter-fretting frequently occur in the clamp vicinity. Therefore, the effective palliative against fretting cracking is very important to be searched. In this paper, two factors, clamping conditions and lubricant, are discussed. The results show that fretting cannot be entirely prevented, but that fretting crack growth can be delayed which increases service lifetime.
