Case hardening processes such as carburizing are extensively applied in heavy-duty gears used in wind turbines, ships, high-speed rails, etc. Contact fatigue failure occurs commonly in engineering practice, thus reduces reliabilities of those machines. Rolling contact fatigue life of a carburized gear is influenced by factors such as the gradients of mechanical properties and profile of initial residual stress. In this regard, the study of contact fatigue life of carburized gears should be conducted with the consideration of those aspects. In this study, a finite element elastic–plastic contact model of a carburized gear is developed which takes the gradients of hardness and initial residual stress into account. Initial residual stress distribution and the hardness profile along the depth are obtained through experimental measurements. The effect of the hardness gradient is reflected by the gradients of yield strength and fatigue parameters. The modified Fatemi–Socie strain-life criterion is used to estimate the rolling contact fatigue life of the heavy-duty carburized gear. Numerical results reveal that according to the Fatemi–Socie fatigue life criterion, rolling contact fatigue failure of the carburized gear will first initiate at subsurface rather than surface. Compared with the un-carburized gear, the rolling contact fatigue lives of the carburized gear under all load conditions are significantly improved. Under heavy load conditions, the carburized layer significantly reduces the fatigue damage mainly due to the benefit to inhibit the accumulation of plasticity. Influence of the residual stress is also investigated. Under the nominal load condition, compared with the residual stress-free case, the existence of the tensile residual stress causes remarkable deterioration of the rolling contact fatigue life while the compressive residual stress with the same magnitude leads to a moderate growth of the rolling contact fatigue life. As the load becomes heavier when plasticity becomes notable, the influence of the initial residual stress on the life is somewhat weakened.
