Time-domain Reliability Estimation of Gear Train considering Failure-dependence

Abstract

Abstract A gear tooth or a gear is usually considered as an independent component in the traditional reliability research. However, gear trains are significantly different from the traditional series systems. Time-dependent configuration of the traditional series systems is fixed. But the meshing tooth-pairs of gear trains are changing all the time during operation. The failures of meshing tooth-pairs are dependent statistically under the common load action. In the paper, the reliability analysis considering time-domain meshing relation of tooth-pairs is studied and meshing relation equations are presented. Then, reliability analysis method of gear trains is developed based on the Monte Carlo simulation with dependent failure and time domain meshing relation. The differences of reliability results between time domain reliability analysis method and traditional series system reliability methods are illustrated by several examples.