Enhancing the fretting fatigue strength of titanium alloys, Ni-based superalloys, and magnesium alloys by reducing stress at contact and by making composites

Abstract

The investigation embodied in the thesis entitled “Enhancing the Fretting Fatigue strength of Titanium alloys, Ni-based superalloys, and Magnesium alloys by reducing stress at contact and by making composites” was initiated in Dec 2017 in the Department of Metallurgy Engineering & Materials Science, Indian Institute of Technology Indore. Fretting damage is one of the major problems encountered between the contact surfaces in the mechanical systems, aircraft, and automobile components that are subjected to a synergistic action of load and small amplitude (<300 µm) oscillatory vibrations. Due to fretting, wear can takes place at the contact which causes the loss of fit and leads to heavy noise, vibration, and ultimately fracture in some of the systems. The fretting wear accelerates the fretting fatigue by the initiation of cracks in localized areas. Due to fretting fatigue, the fatigue strength of the component is reduced drastically more than 50 %. Therefore, my thesis work aims in improving the fatigue strength of Titanium alloys and Ni-based superalloys by reducing the stress at the contact during fretting and by fabricating magnesium metal matrix composite (MMC) to improve the fretting fatigue life of the component.