Abstract
Continuous carbon fibre reinforced epoxy resin laminates were exposed to a fatigue loading. Simultaneously, cylindrical metallic pins with flat and polished front surfaces were pressed against the specimen surfaces with an apparent contact pressure between 10 and 23 MPa. The peak-to-peak oscillation width in the contact region amounted to about 700 μm. Fatigue life of the composite could drastically be reduced by this additional fretting component, if load bearing 0° layers were damaged by fretting. This paper studies the mechanisms of damage development in carbon fibre reinforced laminates under fretting fatigue conditions and proposes a quantitative measure for the degree of fretting fatigue damage. The influence of the loading conditions (contact load, counterpart material and slip amplitude) is investigated.