Contact fatigue is the cause of wear and pitting damage of bearings and many other triboelements. The fatigue process consists of crack nucleation and crack propagation, of which the latter process is reasonably well understood. In this study the crack nucleation process will be modeled and the model validated by experimental work. The model will be based on an energy concept associated with repeated movement of dislocation dipoles in a homogeneous material in response to cyclic stresses.
