Experimental and numerical investigation of fatigue crack growth in the cracked gear tooth

The numerical simulation was conducted to analyse the fatigue crack growth in gear with the finite element codes ansys (ANSYS, Inc. Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, USA.) and franc3d (Fracture Analysis Consultants, Inc. Ithaca, New York, USA.), and the corresponding fatigue test was also carried out. During the simulation, the location of maximal stress induced by the external force was first determined by the code ansys, and then the obtained results were imported into the franc3d to analyse the crack growth. The analysed results were input into the codes ansys and franc3d again to compute the stress and the stress intensity factor in the following steps. After several rounds of analysis, the results of the fatigue crack propagation were obtained. The investigations show that the crack mode I is dominant during the crack growth and the stress intensity factor K-I raises with increase of crack growth length and a series of quarter-elliptical cross sections of the ruptured gear tooth are obtained. The simulation results are in good accordance with experimental findings.