In this study, the effect of contact pressure on fretting fatigue behavior of Al7075-T6 under cyclic normal contact loading is investigated. It is found that fretting fatigue life for the case of cyclic contact load was significantly less than that for constant contact load at the same axial and contact load levels, particularly for High Cycle Fatigue (HCF) conditions. The results showed that the fretting fatigue life decreased monotonically with the increase in normal contact load for all axial stresses. Examination of the fretting scars was performed using optical microscopy and numerical simulation was carried out using commercial finite element (FE) codes ABAQUS® and FRANC2D/L® to calculate the crack propagation life. The crack initiation life was calculated by a combination of numerical and experimental results. Finally, the FE simulation was validated by a comparison between the numerical crack growth rate and the experimental measurement using replica. © 2017 World Scientific Publishing Company.
