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Crystal elasticity analysis of contact fatigue behavior of a wind turbine gear

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Abstract

Rolling contact fatigue is the main factor limiting the service performance of wind turbine gears. The inherent microstructure of the gear material has a significant impact on its contact fatigue behavior and service life. In this research, a two-dimensional contact fatigue model considering the gear material microstructure and the elasticity anisotropy characteristics of the crystals is established. The predicted results reveal a pronounced scatter phenomena of the stress distribution in the subsurface and the localized stress concentration at the grain boundaries caused by crystal elasticity anisotropy. Changes of initial grain orientations can cause a certain fluctuation in the critical stress and its depth in the subsurface. Under the same load level, the gear contact fatigue life calculated by the crystal elasticity anisotropy model is lower compared to isotropic material. Considering the anisotropic properties of the crystal elasticity, an S-N curve based on the maximum contact pressure for the wind turbine gear is drawn.

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Abbreviations

Z 1, Z 2 :

The teeth number

α 0 :

The pressure angle

m 0 :

Gear normal module

B :

Gear tooth width

R 1, R 2 :

Radius at the pitch point

N 1 :

Rated input speed

x 1 , x 2 :

Shifting coefficients

a :

Center distance

C ij :

The crystal elastic constants

Sij :

The constant in the compliance tensor

C local :

The local cubic elasticity stiffness matrix

C global :

The material stiffness matrix in the global coordinate system

R(θ):

The rotation matrix

θ :

The randomly selected rotating Euler angle

E v :

The Young’s modulus calculated by the Voight averaging method

E R :

The Young’s modulus calculated by the Reuss averaging method

E VRH :

The Young’s modulus calculated by the Voigt-Reuss-Hill averaging method

G V :

The shear modulus calculated by the Voight averaging method

G R :

The shear modulus calculated by the Reuss averaging method

G VRH :

The shear modulus calculated by the Voigt-Reuss-Hill averaging method

v V :

The Poisson’s ratio calculated by the Voight averaging method

v R :

The Poisson’s ratio calculated by the Reuss averaging method

v VRH :

The Poisson’s ratio calculated by the Voigt-Reuss-Hill averaging method

E FEM :

The Young’s modulus calculated by the FEM method

v FEM :

The Poisson’s ratio calculated by the FEM method

\(\bar{\sigma}_{ii}\) :

Average stress component in the i direction

\(\bar{\varepsilon}_{11}\) :

The specified strain value in the x direction

Δτ :

The critical stress value

A,B :

Material constants

Δτ GB :

The shear stress reversal along the grain boundary

τ′f :

Shear fatigue ductility

σ′f :

The axial fatigue strength coefficients

σ b :

The tensile strength

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Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFB2001300) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51805049 and U1864210) and Chongqing Research Program of Basic Research and Frontier Technology (No. cstc2017jcyjAX0101).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmissions, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China

    Hao Zhou, Peitang Wei, Huaiju Liu, Caichao Zhu & Wei Wang

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  1. Hao Zhou
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  2. Peitang Wei
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Correspondence to Peitang Wei.

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The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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Recommended by Associate Editor Guangyong Sun

Peitang Wei is the Lecturer of the State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Transmissions, Chongqing University. His research interests involve: gear transmission theory, mesoscopic mechanics modelling of rolling contact fatigue, microstructure characterization and analysis during plastic deformation.

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Zhou, H., Wei, P., Liu, H. et al. Crystal elasticity analysis of contact fatigue behavior of a wind turbine gear. J Mech Sci Technol 33, 4791–4802 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-019-0920-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-019-0920-y

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