Assessing Wear Coefficient and Predicting Surface Wear of Polymer Gears: A Practical Approach
Received: 5 April 2024 | Revised: 30 April 2024 and 9 May 2024 | Accepted: 18 May 2024 | Online: 2 August 2024
Corresponding author: Nedim Pervan
Abstract
With the ever-increasing number of polymer materials and the current number of commercially available materials, the polymer gear design process, regarding the wear lifetime predictions, is a difficult task given that there are very limited data on wear coefficients that can be deployed to evaluate the wear behavior of polymer gears. This study focuses on the classic steel/polymer engagements that result in a wear-induced failure of polymer gears and proposes a simple methodology based on the employment of optical methods that can be used to assess the necessary wear coefficient. Polymer gear testing, performed on an open-loop test rig, along with VDI 2736 guidelines for polymer gear design, serves as a starting point for the detailed analysis of the wear process putting into service a digital microscope that leads to the evaluation of the wear coefficient. The same wear coefficient, as presented within the scope of this study, can be implemented in a rather simple wear prediction model, based on Archard’s wear formulation. The developed model is established on the iterative numerical procedure that accounts for the changes in tooth flank geometry due to wear and investigates the surface wear impact on the contact pressure distribution to completely describe the behavior of polymer gears in different stages of their lifetime. Although a simple one, the developed wear prediction model is sufficient for most engineering applications, as the model prediction and experimental data agree well with each other, and can be utilized to reduce the need to perform time-consuming testing.
Keywords:
polymer gear, wear coefficient, experimental testing, wear prediction modelDownloads
References
D. Zorko, S. Kulovec, J. Duhovnik, and J. Tavčar, "Durability and design parameters of a Steel/PEEK gear pair," Mechanism and Machine Theory, vol. 140, pp. 825–846, 2019.
S. Matkovič, A. Pogačnik, and M. Kalin, "Wear-coefficient analyses for polymer-gear life-time predictions: A critical appraisal of methodologies," Wear, vol. 480–481, 2021.
K. A. M. Alharbi, "Wear and mechanical contact behavior of polymer gears," Journal of Tribology, vol. 141, no. 1, 2019, Art. no. 011101.
D. G. Zisopol, A. I. Portoaca, I. Nae, and I. Ramadan, "A Statistical Approach of the Flexural Strength of PLA and ABS 3D Printed Parts," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 8248-8252, 2022.
D. G. Zisopol, I. Nae, A. I. Portoaca, and I. Ramadan, "A Theoretical and Experimental Research on the Influence of FDM Parameters on Tensile Strength and Hardness of Parts Made of Polylactic Acid," Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 7458-7463, 2021.
S. M. Evans and P. S. Keogh, "Wear mechanisms in polyoxymethylene spur gears," Wear, vol. 428–429, pp. 356–365, 2019.
A. Kumar Singh and Siddhartha, "Thermal and Wear Behavior of Glass Fiber-Filled Functionally Graded Material-Based Polyamide 66 Spur Gears Manufactured by a Novel Technique," Journal of Tribology, vol. 140, no. 2, 2018.
J. Tavcar, G. Grkman, and J. Duhovnik, "Accelerated lifetime testing of reinforced polymer gears," Journal of Advanced Mechanical Design, Systems and Manufacturing, vol. 12, no. 1, 2018.
P. K. Singh, Siddhartha, and A. K. Singh, "An investigation on the thermal and wear behavior of polymer based spur gears," Tribology International, vol. 118, pp. 264–272, 2018.
J. Tavčar, B. Cerne, J. Duhovnik, and D. Zorko, "A multicriteria function for polymer gear design optimization," Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 581–599, 2021.
A. Rohrmoser, C. Bode, B. Schleich, H. Hagenah, S. Wartzack, and M. Merklein, "Influence of metal gear tooth geometry on load and wear within metal-polymer gear pairs," Applied Sciences, vol. 12, no. 1, 2022, Art. no. 270.
S. H. Budapanahalli, S. B. Mallur, A. Y. Patil, and S. C. Dhaduti, "Experimental Investigation on Hybrid Aluminium Metal Matrix Composite Spur Gears," Journal of The Institution of Engineers (India): Series D, Jan. 2024.
S. C. Dhaduti, S. G. Sarganachari, A. Y. Patil, S. H. Budapanahalli, and R. Kumar, "Asymmetric/Symmetric Glass-Fibre-Filled Polyamide 66 Gears—A Systematic Fatigue Life Study," Journal of Composites Science, vol. 7, no. 9, Sep. 2023, Art. no. 345.
S. C. Dhaduti, S. G. Sarganachari, A. Y. Patil, and T. M. Yunus Khan, "Prediction of injection molding parameters for symmetric spur gear," Journal of Molecular Modeling, vol. 26, no. 11, 2020, Art. no. 302.
S. H. Budapanahalli, S. B. Mallur, A. Y. Patil, and R. Kumar, "Optimization study on wear behaviour of aluminium 7075 hybrid composite containing silicon carbide and aluminium oxide using Taguchi method," Acta Periodica Technologica, no. 54, pp. 129-136, 2023.
S. H. Budapanahalli et al., "A Tribological Study on the Effect of Reinforcing SiC and Al2O3 in Al7075: Applications for Spur Gears," Metals, vol. 12, no. 6, 2022, Art. no. 1028.
B. Zhong, R. Zhang, P. Wei, H. Liu, J. Li, and Z. Lu, "The Durability Performance of Polyketone Gears under Various Lubrication Conditions," Journal of Tribology, vol. 144, no. 9, 2022, Art. no. 091203.
"MatWeb: Material Property Data," MatWeb LLC, 2022. https://www.matweb.com.
S. Matkovič, A. Pogačnik, and M. Kalin, "Comparison between VDI 2736 wear calculation and experimentally obtained results," in International Conference on Gears 2019, 2019, pp. 1311–1322.
VDI 2736 Part 2; Thermoplastic Gear Wheels—Cylindrical Gears—Calculation of the Load—Carrying Capacity. Harzgerode, Germany: Verein Deutscher Ingenieure, 2016.
Q. Li, F. Forsbach, M. Schuster, D. Pielsticker, and V. L. Popov, "Wear analysis of a heterogeneous annular cylinder," Lubricants, vol. 6, no. 1, 2018, Art. no. 28.
A. Kahraman and H. Ding, "A methodology to predict surface wear of planetary gears under dynamic conditions," Mechanics Based Design of Structures and Machines, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 493–515, 2010.
N. Menga and M. Ciavarella, "A Winkler solution for the axisymmetric Hertzian contact problem with wear and finite element method comparison,"Journal of Strain Analysis for Engineering Design, vol. 50, no. 3, pp. 156–162, 2015.
S. Garcin, S. Baydoun, P. Arnaud, and S. Fouvry, "Fretting wear modeling of 3D and 2D Hertzian contacts with a third-body layer using a Winkler elastic foundation model," Tribology International, vol. 170, Jun. 2022, Art. no. 107493.
Z. Liu, X. Xiao, W. Zhou, Z. Wang, H. Zhang, and J. Zhou, "Wear Analysis of Hot Extrusion Punch for Large Fan Shaft Based on Archard Wear Theory," in Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on the Technology of Plasticity - Current Trends in the Technology of Plasticity, 2024, pp. 371–380.
F. Di Puccio and L. Mattei, "Further Validation of a Simple Mathematical Description of Wear and Contact Pressure Evolution in Sliding Contacts," Lubricants, vol. 11, no. 5, 2023, Art. no. 230.
M. B. Sánchez, M. Pleguezuelos, and J. I. Pedrero, "Influence of profile modification on the transmission error of spur gears under surface wear," Mechanism and Machine Theory, vol. 191, Jan. 2024, Art. no. 105473.
D. Zorko, J. Štiglic, B. Černe, and N. Vukašinović, "The effect of center distance error on the service life of polymer gears," Polymer Testing, vol. 123, Jun. 2023, Art. no. 108033.
A. Dzierwa and P. Pawlus, "Wear of a rough disc in dry sliding contact with a smooth ball: experiment and modeling," Archives of Civil and Mechanical Engineering, vol. 21, no. 2, 2021, Art. no. 85.
A. Winkler, M. Bartz, and S. Wartzack, "Numerical Wear Modeling in the Mixed and Boundary Lubrication Regime," Lubricants, vol. 10, no. 12, 2022, Art. no. 334.
A. Ignatijev, M. Borovinšek, S. Glodež, "A Computational Model for Analysing the Dry Rolling/Sliding Wear Behaviour of Polymer Gears Made of POM," Polymers, vol. 16, no. 8, 2024, Art. no. 1073.
M. S. Tunalioglu and B. V. Agca, "Wear and Service Life of 3-D Printed Polymeric Gears," Polymers, vol. 14, no. 10, 2022, Art. no. 2064.
Downloads
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Enis Muratovic, Adil Muminovic, Nedim Pervan, Muamer Delic, Adis Muminovic, Isad Saric
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after its publication in ETASR with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
