Fretting corrosion
Micro-movement between a bearing outer ring and its housing seat under load, which oxidises and removes material at the contact. ISO 15243:2017 classifies it as a damage mode in its own right, with reddish-brown oxide debris and polished bands on the seat as its characteristic evidence.
Fretting corrosion is a fit problem that presents as a corrosion problem. The oxide debris and the polished bands are the evidence, but the driving condition is relative movement where the design assumed none — a seat that has lost its interference, a housing that has grown, or a load path that reverses.
That distinction decides the repair. Cleaning the seat and reinstalling the same bearing restores neither the interference nor the load path, and the damage resumes on the same schedule. ISO 15243 is useful here precisely because it separates this mode from raceway fatigue: the two look alike in a failure report and call for different corrections.
Sources and references
- StandardISO 15243:2017, Rolling bearings — Damage and failures — Terms, characteristics and causesInternational Organization for Standardization · accessed August 31, 2026