Evaluation of Contact Fatigue Life of a Wind Turbine Gear Pair Considering Residual Stress

Contact fatigue is a main fatigue mode of gears such as those used in wind turbines, due to heavy duties occurring in engineering practice. The understanding of the gear contact fatigue should be based on the interaction between the local material strength and the stress state. Under the rolling–sliding motion, the multi-axial stress state makes the gear contact fatigue problem more complicated. A numerical contact model is proposed to evaluate the contact fatigue life of an intermediate parallel gear stage of a megawatt level wind turbine gearbox. The gear meshing theory is applied to calculate the geometry kinematics parameters of the gear pair. The gear contact is assumed as a plane strain contact problem without the consideration of the influence of the helical angle. The quasi-static tooth surface load distribution is assumed along the line of action. The elastic mechanics theory is used to calculate the elastic stress field generated by surface tractions. The discrete convolute, fast Fourier transformation method is applied to estimate the subsurface stresses distributions. In order to describe the time-varying multi-axial stress states during contact, the Matake, Findley, and Dang Van multi-axial fatigue criteria are used to calculate the critical planes and equivalent stresses. Both the statistic and the deterministic fatigue life models are applied by choosing the Lundberg–Palmgren (LP), Zaretsky models, respectively. The effect of the residual stress distribution on the contact fatigue initiation lives is discussed. In addition, the crack propagation lives are estimated by using the Paris theory.