Slip-critical bolted connections are prone to developing fretting damage between the contacting surfaces. In this study, the effect of two different bolt preload values, 90 and 145 kN, on the fretting fatigue behaviour of steel double-lap bolted joints with a Class B (shot-blasted) surface under high-cycle fatigue conditions is investigated experimentally and numerically. The experimental results show that increasing the bolt preload decreased the total fretting fatigue life significantly. Moreover, the proposed numerical method was able to predict crack initiation and crack propagation behaviours successfully.
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