Enhanced Prediction of Gear Tooth Surface Fatigue Life

Sentient will develop an enhanced prediction of gear tooth surface fatigue life with rigorous analysis of the tribological phenomena that contribute to pitting failure. Advanced mixed-elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) models that are capable of fully describing the tribology of the mating gear teeth will be utilized to determine the influence of surface roughness and asperity interaction on the stresses driving the degradation of the surface. These factors are not rigorously addressed by currently available solutions. The lubrication analysis will be coupled with a damage accumulation algorithm that takes into account fatigue initiation at the level of the material microstructure. This integrated software will be the world's first physics-based gear tooth life estimation model with rigorous consideration of lubrication and pitting/scuffing damage progression in nominally loaded and misaligned gears. When complete, an end-user of the software will input the design parameters of a gearbox along with a mission load spectrum, and the software will output the estimated service lives of its gears. If the historical or anticipated load spectrum happens to change, the altered spectrum can be input and the life recomputed. This flexibility provides the most accurate and up-to-date estimations of both the current gearbox health and of the remaining life.