Assessment of fretting fatigue in high strength steel bolted connections with simplified Fe modelling techniques

The fretting fatigue (FF) damage on contact surfaces constitutes a major problem in High Strength Steel (HSS) bolted connections when subjected to cyclic loadings, in that it significantly lowers the fatigue life. Moreover, the estimation of damage in the contact areas is challenging and laborious through experiments. The present paper proposes a simplified modelling technique to estimate the fretting fatigue damage in high cycle regime by considering the pretension effect and contact properties of bolted lap connections. To do so, a three-dimensional solid model is developed and validated. Afterwards, simplified FE models are validated using the three-dimensional model and test results to identify the most computationally efficient model for bolt connection in HSS under static and fatigue loading conditions. It was observed that the newly developed FE model could retain all the components on contacting surfaces while saving of up to 97% of the computational time over full solid models. These results successively provided insight into the crack initiation location and the fatigue lifetime of the joint and showed good agreement with experimental and three-dimensional solid model data.