Application of a Multiaxial Fatigue Criterion for the Evaluation of Life of Gears of Complex Geometry
Gears can show significant biaxial stress state at tooth root fillet, due to the way they are loaded and their particular geometry. This biaxial stress state can show a significant variability in principal axes during meshing. Moreover loads may have non predictable components that can be evaluated with the aid of recorded data from complex spectra. In these conditions, commonly adopted approaches for fatigue evaluation may be unsuitable for a reliable fatigue life prediction. This work is aimed at discussing a computer implementation of a fatigue life prediction method suitable for multiaxial stress states and constant amplitude or random loading. For random loading a counting procedure to extract cycles from complex load histories is discussed. This method, proposed by Vidal et al., is based on the r.m.s. value of a damage indicator over all the planes through the point where the fatigue life calculation is made. Miner’s rule is used for the evaluation of the overall damage. The whole fatigue life of the component is evaluated in terms of the numbers of repetitions of the loading block. FEM data are used to evaluate stresses under load. The implementation was validated using test data found in the technical literature. Examples of applications to gears are finally discussed.