ARTICLE IN PRESS

Mechanical Systems
and
Signal Processing
Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (2005) 836846
www.elsevier.com/locate/jnlabr/ymssp

Gear fatigue crack prognosis using embedded model,

gear dynamic model and fracture mechanics
C. James Lia,, Hyungdae Leeb
a
Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street,
Troy, NY 12180, USA
b
Foster-Miller Technologies, Inc., 431 New Karner Road, Albany, NY 12205, USA

Received 18 November 2003; received in revised form 17 June 2004; accepted 22 June 2004
Available online 15 September 2004

Abstract

This paper presents a model-based method that predicts remaining useful life of a gear with a fatigue
crack. The method consists of an embedded model to identify gear meshing stiffness from measured gear
torsional vibration, an inverse method to estimate crack size from the estimated meshing stiffness; a gear
dynamic model to simulate gear meshing dynamics and determine the dynamic load on the cracked tooth;
and a fast crack propagation model to forecast the remaining useful life based on the estimated crack size
and dynamic load. The fast crack propagation model was established to avoid repeated calculations of
FEM and facilitate eld deployment of the proposed method. Experimental studies were conducted to
validate and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method for prognosis of a cracked gear.
r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Gear; Crack; Prognosis

1. Introduction

Gearboxes are widely used to transmit power and change speed and/or direction in many
mechanical systems, such as rotary and xed-wing aircrafts, which represent typical high-stress
and low-weight applications, where ultimate failure would constitute either a safety hazard and/or
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-518-276-6192; fax: +1-518-276-2623.
E-mail addresses: lic3@rpi.edu (C.J. Li), hlee@fosmiltech.com (H. Lee).

0022-460X/$ - see front matter r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2004.06.007
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C.J. Li, H. Lee / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (2005) 836846 837

unscheduled downtime. Many major faults in gearboxes can be classied into shaft and tooth-
related problems. One of the most common causes of gear failure is gear tooth fatigue crack due
to cyclic loading. It results in progressive damage to gear teeth and ultimately leads to the
complete failure of the gear. Hence, the ability for early detection, diagnosis, and prognosis of
gear tooth fatigue crack has always been one of the major technical challenges for safe and
economic operation of machinery containing gears. By knowing the remaining useful life of a
cracked gear, maintenance personnel can optimally schedule maintenance and prevent
catastrophic failures simultaneously. The user can also perform optimal asset management and
mission planning.

2. State-of-the-art

There have been a number of studies in predicting gear tooth fatigue crack propagation by
various researchers. For example, Flasker et al. [1] investigated the effect of the contact area on
the direction of crack propagation and the remaining useful life of the gear with a crack in a tooth
root for different load conditions both experimentally and numerically. A nite element
programme was used to determine the stress intensity factor in tooth root, and then the number of
loading cycles required for the crack to propagate from the initial size to the critical crack length
was estimated numerically and compared with the experimental results. The investigations showed
that the experimental remaining lives are in good agreement with the numerical ones, although the
former frequently fall short of the latter.
Blarasin et al. [2] proposed two numerical approaches, nite element models and weight
function technique, to calculate the stress intensity factor. They developed two- and three-
dimensional (3D) nite element models of the cracked specimens similar to gear teeth and
evaluated the stress intensity factor as a function of crack depth, considering the effects of both
the loads and residual stresses for two different types of crack. However, the nite element method
is very expensive in terms of modelling and computational time, and the results could be mesh-
dependent. The weight function technique used to determine the stress intensity factor in cracked
gear teeth allows easier calculations. The advantage of this approach is that, once the weight
function is determined, it is not necessary to perform further numerical modelling to analyse
different crack depths. The weight function results are in good agreement with the nite element
ones. Furthermore, a computer software package based on the weight function technique makes
crack propagation predictions possible.
Lewicki and Ballarini [3] studied the effect of gear rim thickness on crack propagation life
analytically and experimentally. Principles of linear elastic fracture mechanics and nite element
modelling, FRacture ANalysis Code (FRANC), were used to simulate crack propagation and
calculate Mode I stress intensity factors as a function of crack length. The predicted stress
intensity factors were then used with various fatigue crack growth models [46] to estimate crack
propagation life. Experimental tests were performed in a gear fatigue test rig to validate predicted
crack propagation results, and good correlation between predicted and measured crack growth
was achieved when the fatigue crack closure concept was introduced into the analysis.
However, the aforementioned methods are only suitable for off-line applications. They
generally assume a constant loading on the tooth and are blind to the actual crack size during
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838 C.J. Li, H. Lee / Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing 19 (2005) 836846

crack propagation. For on-line near real-time prognostic applications, loading variations due to
stiffness reduction of the cracked tooth have to be taken into consideration, and monitoring
sensor outputs must be allowed to modulate model predictions. The former means dynamic
loading on the cracked tooth has to be estimated, e.g. by simulating meshing dynamics. The latter
translates to the need of a diagnostic algorithm for crack size estimation. Neither is
straightforward to realize. Another difculty is the high computational costs associated with
the FEM. These barriers are primary drivers behind some ad hoc approaches that simply trend a
diagnostic index against a frequently somewhat arbitrary threshold which may be determined
from some historical data such as run-to-failure data. Such an approach is usually vague about
the relationship between the index and crack size and assumes that some simple black-box models,
such as regression ones, can approximate the underlying failure mechanisms. Obviously, these
kind of simple approaches provide little guarantee about their prediction accuracy and
generalization capability and therefore are of limited values.

3. Proposed approach

Fig. 1 illustrates the proposed approach. The methodology requires an integration of the
following three:

A failure model (crack propagation model) is employed to forecast the remaining useful life of a
gear based on the current crack size and tooth load.

A tooth crack diagnostic algorithm based on embedded modelling is developed to identify gear
meshing stiffness and then estimate crack size from measured gear vibration.

A gear dynamic model is used to simulate the meshing dynamics and determine the dynamic
load on the cracked tooth.

3.1. Crack size estimation using embedded model

A lumped parameter model describing the dynamics of a gearbox such as (1) is rst established.
I y K g fy T; (1)
where y is the angular displacement vector, I the inertia matrix, Kg the unknown gear meshing
stiffness function and f is its unknown coefcient.

Fig. 1. Overall approach.

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The unknown meshing stiffness is assumed to be periodic and therefore can be represented by a
truncated Fourier series, which is then embedded into the lumped parameter model. For a good
gear that has regularly spaced identical teeth, the meshing stiffness is largely repeated from one
tooth to the next with a fundamental frequency of tooth meshing.
a0 X N  
K g t an cos2pnf m t bn sin2pnf m t ; (2)
2 n1

where N is the number of harmonics included and fm is the meshing frequency. On the other hand,
a faulty tooth gives a meshing pattern that is repeated largely once a revolution. Therefore, the
previous Fourier series is modulated with another series with a fundamental frequency as the
rotation frequency.
!
X L
a0 X N
K g t 1 cl cos2plf s t d l sin2plf s t an cos2pnf m t
l1
2 n1
!
bn sin2pnf m t ; 3

where L is the number of harmonics considered and fs is the gear rotating frequency. The sensitivity
equations are then derived for the embedded model to provide the gradient required by the non-
linear least-squares optimisation algorithm, which identies an optimal meshing stiffness in the
sense of minimal discrepancy between model output and measurement from the actual gearbox.
When there is only a pair of teeth in contact, the total meshing compliance, which is the inverse
of the meshing stiffness, is the summation of pinion (driving gear) tooth compliance, gear (driven
gear) tooth compliance, and local contact compliance. By assuming the crack is on the pinion
tooth, one can calculate the cracked pinion tooth compliance by subtracting the known
compliances of the normal gear tooth and local contact from the meshing compliance.
Subsequently, the size of the crack can be estimated from the pinion tooth compliance from
the relationship between the tooth compliance and crack size obtained with a FEM programme,
FRANC [7]. Wawrzynek developed the 2D FEM/fracture mechanics-based code, FRANC to
specically analyse the 2D cracked structure. Its FEM part can calculate the stress/strain of a
cracked 2D structure, and therefore the stiffness of a cracked tooth. A user can either import the
meshed geometry to FRANC or generate the mesh inside the FRANC system. Additionally, with
a given crack incremental size and crack propagation steps, FRANC can automatically propagate
the crack under the mixed mode loading conditions (modes I and II). This feature, which is unique
to FRANC, is just one of many available such as analysing plane strain, plane stress, or
axisymetric problems and post-processing the nite-element mesh. For more details about crack
size estimation, please refer to [8].

3.2. Dynamic load simulation using gear dynamic model

Gear teeth in service are cyclically loaded and the loading depends on meshing dynamics. To
simulate the dynamic loading, Dynamic Analysis of Spur gear Transmissions (DANST) [9] is
employed.
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Inside DANST, a gear system is described as a rotational lumped parameter model (e.g. Fig. 2)
whose meshing stiffness is calculated from geometry and material properties. The spur gear
system used in this study consists of driving and driven gears, connecting shafts, a motor, and a
load. The spur gear transmission system is considered as a four-degree-of-freedom lumped-mass
model in DANST. Parameters including inertias, damping and stiffness are calculated by this
programme from inputs such as geometry and material properties. These parameters are then
substituted into the following equations of motion to simulate the dynamic response of the spur
gear system.
J M y M C s1 y_ M  y_ 1 K s1 yM  y1 T M ;
J 1 y 1 C s1 y_ 1  y_ M K s1 y1  yM C g tRb1 Rb1 y_ 1  Rb2 y_ 2 
K g tRb1 Rb1 y1  Rb2 y2  T f 1 t;
J 2 y 2 C s2 y_ 2  y_ L K s2 y2  yL C g tRb2 Rb2 y_ 2  Rb2 y_ 1 
K g tRb2 Rb2 y2  Rb1 y1  T f 2 t;
J L y L C s2 y_ L  y_ 2 K s2 yL  y2 T L ; 4

where yM ; y1 ; y2 ; yL are the angular displacement of the motor, the gears, and the load (y_ and y
indicate time differentiation), JM, J1, J2, JL the mass moments of the motor, the gears, and the
load, Cs1, Cs2, Cg(t) the damping factor of the shafts and gear mesh, Ks1, Ks2, Kg(t) the stiffness of
shafts and meshing gear teeth, Rb1, Rb2 the base radii of the gears, TM, Tf1, Tf2, TL the torque
from motor, gear friction, and load, T the time.
The above equations of motion were established from basic gearbox geometry and elementary
vibration principles. A fourth-order RungeKutta Nystrom method is employed to solve the
above-governing equations. The programme also calculates transmission errors and dynamic

1
Gear 1
TM M

Motor
Shaft 1 TL

Load
Shaft 2
L
Gear 2

2
Ks1 Kg Ks2

JM J1 J2 JL

Cs1 Cg Cs2

Fig. 2. A simple spur gearbox model.

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load. The theoretical background and parametric study of DANST are described in [10,11], and
the procedure to use the DANST-PC (v.3.0) is given in Oswald et al. [9].
A root crack changes stiffness of the tooth, which, in turn, has an effect on the gear meshing
dynamics and actual dynamic load on a tooth. Therefore, it is necessary to compute the dynamic
load after each crack increment in order to obtain an accurate prediction of the residual life. As it
is, DANST can only simulate good gears because it assumes all the teeth on the same gear have
the same meshing stiffness which is not the case in the presence of a cracked tooth. Choi [12]
extended the DANST to include the effect of a cracked tooth by implementing multiple lookup
tables containing tooth meshing stiffness for both healthy and cracked teeth.
Because a gears vibration should be repeated from one rotation to the next, the initial
conditions should be identical to the terminal conditions at the end of one simulated rotation.
Fig. 3 shows a computational procedure of the DANST to accomplish that. First tooth
parameters such as meshing stiffness, damping, tooth prole, inertia, and friction torque are
calculated from the geometry of the geared transmission system components and the operating
conditions and then gear dynamic response (e.g. torsional vibration) is computed from the
parameters and pre-selected initial conditions. The procedure is repeated using the average of the
initial and terminal conditions as new initial conditions until the terminal conditions converge to
initial conditions. The dynamic load at the convergence is then taken as the output.

3.3. Remaining useful life prediction

The prediction of spur gear tooth residual life is based on a failure model, i.e. the 2D FEM/
fracture mechanics code FRANC. To use FRANC, a gear geometric model is generated from gear
geometric parameters by a computer programme such as GPAT developed by Lewicki [13].
Subsequently, P3/PATRAN is used to generate meshes which are then used by FRANC to
compute the modes I and II crack-tip stress intensity factor (KI and KII) at each discrete crack
propagation step based on the current crack size and dynamic load. FRANC calculates the stress
intensity factors KI and KII using the combination of the J-integral method and the maximum

Fig. 3. Computational procedure for calculating dynamic load.

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tangential stress crack propagation direction theory [14]. The computed KI and KII values are then
used to nd the crack propagation angle by employing one of the following methods: the
maximum tangential stress theory, minimum strainenergydensity or maximum energy release
rate. After the propagation angle is determined, the calculated KI values are used to calculate the
crack growth rate. Based on the Lewickis study [13], the load was placed around the Highest
Point of Single Tooth Contact (HPSTC) to propagate the crack in the tooth root area. The whole
procedure of crack prognosis is shown in Fig. 4.
Lewicki used FRANC to investigate the crack propagation in the spur gear tooth. In his
research, good agreement was found between the measured and predicted crack propagation
paths for gears whose backup ratios (mB) are greater than 1.0. Our experimental data also
conrmed that. As one can see from Fig. 5, the crack propagation path predicted by FRANC 2D
was almost identical to the experimental one during test 2.
Obviously, FRANC2D would not be appropriate for eld applications due to its demand on
computing resources. A Fast Algorithm was proposed to circumvent this problem. It employs a
basic crack growth model, i.e. the Paris Equation [4].
ai  ai1
N i  N i1 ; (5)
CDK i m
DK i DK i1
DK i ; (6)
2
where DN N i  N i1 is the number of cycles to propagate the crack by a Da ai  ai1 ; C and
m are material constants, and DK i is the mode I stress intensity factor range for crack size ai under
the estimated gear dynamic load. To predict the remaining life, the difference between a current
crack size and a failure threshold (i.e. 86% of the tooth thickness) is divided into a number of
small increments to obtain the Da: Eq. (5) is then used to calculate the DN for each increment one
by one. The sum of all the DNs is the estimated remaining useful life.

Fig. 4. Procedure of the failure model.

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Fig. 5. Simulated (FRANC) and actual crack path.

Due to the complicated geometry and loading, it is not possible to compute the stress intensity
factor for a cracked tooth with some simple analytical formula. Although FEM models can be
used, they require too much computation time and therefore are not practical for eld
applications. A solution is to use FRANC to pre-compute the Mode I stress intensity factor for a
number of combinations of crack size and load to form a look-up table, which when used along
with an interpolation algorithm can provide the needed stress intensity factor for any size and
load within a predetermined range. This study used a bilinear interpolation method although the
choice is not really critical due to the smoothness of the function. The mode I stress intensity
factors calculated for different crack sizes and load conditions are shown in Fig. 6.

4. Experimental study

Fig. 7 shows the gear test rig. It consists of a 40 HP variable speed motor and a 75 HP generator
between which a testing gearbox is installed. Transducers are available to measure vibration, input
torque, and angular positions of both pinion and gear. Additionally, bore scopes are installed to
track the evolution of gear faults such as tooth crack and pitting. The 10 HP single-stage spur
gearbox used in this study contains a pinion of 23 teeth, and a gear of 54 teeth. The nominal
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Fig. 6. Stress intensity factors as a function of crack size and load.

Fig. 7. The gear test set-up.

pinion speed is 450 rpm and the maximum input torque is 104 Nm. A small notch was made with
wired electrical discharge machining at the root of tooth 17 to create a stress concentration which
eventually led to a propagating crack. The gears were made of AISI 4140 annealed steel whose
properties are found from a handbook.
The angular positions of the pinion and gear are measured by two high-resolution encoders
producing 9000 pulses and 10,000 pulses per revolution, respectively. Two 10-fold interpolators
(Heidenhain IBV 610) were used to increase the angular resolution by 10 times, i.e. 90,000 and
100,000 pulses per revolution. These pulses were then counted by the National Instrument Data
Acquisition System Timing Controller (DAQ-STC), which integrates all data acquisition counter/
timer functionality into a single Application Specic Integrated Circuit (ASIC), to calculate
angular positions. From the angular positions, transmission error (which is the difference between
where the gear tooth is physically and where it should be if the gears were perfect) with a
resolution of 7 105 rad can be calculated if desired.
Three gear run-to-fail experiments were conducted on the gear test rig to collect measurements
necessary to validate and to rene the proposed method. The obtained measurements include
transmission error (torsional vibration), torque, accelerometer outputs, and tooth images. The
rst gear test data was used to obtain the material constants, m and p c,needed by the Paris
equation and they were found to be 1.4354 and 2:945 10 in=cyc=psi inm ; respectively. For
13
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Fig. 8. Comparison of the measured and the estimated remaining useful life: (a) for gear test 2 and (b) for gear test 3.

tests 2 and 3, the embedded model and the gear dynamic simulator were applied to estimate crack
sizes and dynamic loads. The Fast Algorithm was then used to predict the remaining useful lives
of the crack pinion at several points over the test duration. The future life estimates are plotted
along with the actual remaining life in Fig. 8 for tests 2 and 3, respectively. The maximal
prediction error, which is dened as the difference between the actual and predicted remaining
useful life, is smaller than 7%. This shows that a remaining useful life of a gear with a fatigue
crack can be accurately predicted by the proposed techniques.

5. Conclusions

A spur gear fatigue crack prognostic methodology was devised by integrating an embedded
model for crack size estimation, a gear dynamic simulator for dynamic load estimation, a nite
element-based simulator for calculating stress intensity factor, and a Fast Algorithm based on a
Paris crack growth model for crack propagation, to predict the remaining useful life of a cracked
gear. It is suitable for eld applications because it avoids the need of on-line FEM by using a look-
up table of stress intensity factors pre-calculated by FEM for a number of tooth loads and crack
sizes, and an interpolation algorithm. The proposed method was calibrated with a gear run-to-fail
test data and then tested with the data of two other gear tests. Experimental study yielded a
maximal remaining useful life prediction error, which is dened as the difference between the
actual and predicted remaining life, smaller than 7% which is very good.

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