Rolling contact fatigue of polycrystalline solids under lubrication contact

In this study, a fatigue model based on crystalline dislocation physics is developed by coupling the theory of elastohydrodynamic lubrication and distributed dislocation technique. The lubrication solutions are determined by a MATLAB-COMSOL framework, which is then applied to the surface with randomly oriented grains by using the subroutines in ABAQUS. The fatigue performances under idealized hertz and lubrication modes are compared. A higher level of friction coefficient influences both the crack nucleation location and its initiation life, while the influence is negligible under the sufficiently lubricated contact. A parameter analysis on the crack initiation life is further explored by using two-parameter Weibull distribution. The conclusions potentially provide insights into the understanding of fatigue mechanism and anti-fatigue designing for engineering materials.