Damage Analysis of a Gear Box Shaft under Upset Working Conditions Using Ansys nCode

Determining the fatigue life of parts under periodic, sinusoidal vibration is a fairly straightforward process in which damage content is calculated by multiplying the stress amplitude of each cycle from harmonic analysis with the number of cycles that the parts experience in the field. The computation is relatively simple because the absolute value of the vibration is highly predictable at any point in time. The purpose of this paper is the damage estimation of a gear box shaft subjected to severe overloads. This is part of an upset conditions testing to which a statistical significant population of gear boxes is subjected in order to have confidence and demonstrate the reliability of the device. Prior to this the simulation with finite element analysis (FEA) might be done in order to have a clue and a benchmark for testing. In this simulation using nCode under Ansys Workbench, the authors concluded that the upset conditions to which the gear box was subjected, at least for the analyzed shaft, had or will have no noticeable impact.