  In this work, the finite elements method (FEM) is used to analyse the growth
of fretting cracks. FEM can be favourably used to extract the stress intensity
factors in mixed mode, a typical situation for cracks growing in the vicinity
of a fretting contact. The present study is limited to straight cracks which is
a simple system chosen to develop and validate the FEM analysis. The FEM model
is tested and validated against popular weight functions for straight cracks
perpendicular to the surface. The model is then used to study fretting crack
growth and understand the effect of key parameters such as the crack angle and
the friction between crack faces. Predictions achieved by this analysis match
the essential features of former experimental fretting results, in particular
the average crack arrest length can be predicted accurately.
