4. Conclusion

This article deals with surface damage in lubricated radio contacts, and more specifically with surface fatigue.

The various types of surface damage have been classified according to the stresses that produce them.

The analysis of contact operation proposed here is based on mechanical concepts: geometry, stress and temperature fields. It concerns the usual domains of a tribological problem: the first bodies, i.e. the masses, and the third body, i.e. the viscous lubricating film.

A particular feature of this approach is that it takes into account geometric scales covering several orders of magnitude.

One of these is a classic: global contact. It has been the subject of a great deal of theoretical and experimental work on :

• lubricant film geometry...