Reliability Modeling and Estimation of the Gear System

Traditional reliability models of the gear system either simplify the gear system unreasonably or are too complicated to be applicable for some gear systems. Therefore, a reliability model of the gear system considering statistically dependent failure based on the theory of the order statistics is developed in this paper. Firstly, the gear bending fatigue test of small sample is implemented to obtain the P-S-N curves that are fitted by using the least square method and the linear regression method of the statistical parameters under the test stress levels. Then, according to stress-strength interference theory and the theory of the order statistics, the reliability models considering the number of load cycles from a gear to gear system are built, which indicates clear modeling process of the gear system. Finally, the proposed reliability model of gear system is validated by using the Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) and the system reliability under special load history is analyzed qualitatively.