Development of a method for estimation of contact fatigue life in hypoid gears

Abstract: Hypoid gears have been used extensively in automobiles, aerospace, marine and other applications for decades. The special advantages of hypoid gears come with inherent contact complexities of varying curvature and sliding in both profile and lengthwise direction. Spalling failure is catastrophic and needs to be addressed with deeper roots in gear design. Analytical methods present several limitations. Iterative development from experimentation is expensive and time consuming with different nonlinear parameters difficult to interpret. This thesis aims to develop a method to calculate contact fatigue life for initiation of spalling using finite element methods. Experiments have played a major role in understanding the causal factors for failure, determining the fatigue life and to study the major system design parameters. A failure analysis of the fractured flank is performed. It clarified the design causal factors for failure and the mechanism of failure. Pinion being the vulnerable part is the focus of this thesis, a finite element model was developed on ANSOL HFM and the residual stresses were superposed on MSC Marc. A finite element fatigue analysis is performed on FEMFAT and the component fatigue life is determined. The calculated fatigue life is compared with physical testing results using Weibull statistical analysis in combination with probabilistic bearing life models to formulate emphatical correlation methods. The goal of this thesis is to establish a method to estimate fatigue life by taking up example of computing subsurface fatigue life of a hypoid pinion. The influence factors like the method of contact analysis, different types of residual stresses due to case hardening and shot peening, fatigue criteria, friction, material properties are studied in this thesis to develop a conscience for the methodology to computing contact fatigue life. The bulk material properties based on hardness represented fatigue properties more accurately. Scaled normal stress in critical plane fatigue criteria was found more suitable for contact analysis with pre-stresses and multi-axial non-proportional contact stress state on FEMFAT. Finite element based contact analysis method was found to be more suitable for subsurface fatigue life estimation despite the inherent advantages of the hybrid surface integral method and its accurate representation of friction. It was found that inclusion of friction in model did not change the fatigue life significantly, showing that the influence of hardness, surface topographies lubrication and contact temperature on shear stresses are too large to be neglected. Contact fatigue life increased by a factor of 4.4 times due to shot peening of gears in comparison with case hardening indicating the influence of residual stresses. For the estimation of fatigue life at the initiation of failure, a complete correlation with the fatigue test results could not be achieved and reasons for deviations were clearly identified. The area of damage indicated by this computation method correlated with the damage observed during tests. The observations and calculations indicated premature failure of pinion with explanation of mechanism of failure of pinion flank using contact conditions.