Reliability modeling for planetary gear transmission system considering dependent failure processes

Abstract

AbstractMany mechanical systems are subject to degradation and random shock processes, which are dependent and competing. The two processes are soft failure process and hard failure process, either of which occurs will cause the system to fail. In this paper, a hard failure model of the gear system is established based on the Stress‐Strength Interference model, and a soft failure model of the system is also proposed. To consider the dependence between the two failure processes, the copula function is adopted. Then, the reliability model of the system subject to degradation and shocks is developed, and an expression of the system reliability is derived. Finally, a planetary gear transmission system is taken as a numerical example to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model, which is considered a k‐out‐of‐n system experiencing the processes of degradation and random shocks. Moreover, the effect of model parameters on reliability is evaluated through sensitivity analysis.