Physics Based Gear Health Prognosis via Modeling Coupled with Component Level Tests

Investment in health and usage monitoring systems (HUMS) has proven to yield significant safety and cost benefits to the military. For instance, the Helicopter Integrated Diagnostic System (HIDS) has achieved a documented success rate of up to 70 percent in detecting faults. However, despite all the improvements in failure detection, the remaining 30 percent of faults are not diagnosed. The work proposed under this STTR Phase II seeks to develop VEXTEC's gear prognostics tool for a critical need within the HIDS program in attaining 100 % detection of catastrophic gear faults. This project provides for successful modeling of the effects of tooth bending, contact fatigue and lubrication to advance the understanding of gear failure modes as a critical and new approach to aerospace application prognosis. The technology involves successful modeling of the gear material microstructure and the highly localized multi-axial stresses at tooth contact. VEXTEC will demonstrate its gear prognostics tool through comparison of their modeling results with data from a full-scale gear test.