Investigation of spline teeth fretting/wear phenomena in aeronautical power transmission applications

In this work a Finite Element wear simulation tool is developed in order to study geometry and contact parameters evolution due to wear. The main focus of this thesis is fretting wear in spline couplings but the methodology here implemented could be easily improved to study wear in a more general way. Firstly, the wear simulation tool was developed and validated, using a commercial Finite Element code, for a simple case of a cylinder on flat fretting test. Then, it was used to predict wear in spline couplings for a loading condition of load on-load off. It was validated with experimental evidences found in the literature. Finally, it was used to predict fretting wear in spline couplings due to angular misalignment and a qualitative comparison was made with experimental evidences.