Failure of an intermediate gearbox of a helicopter

An intermediate gearbox of a helicopter failed resulting in an accident. A systematic failure analysis was conducted to find out the cause of failure. Examination revealed that fatigue fracturing of the driving gear was responsible for the gearbox failure. The teeth of the gear were severely damaged by spalling. Fractographic study revealed multiple fatigue crack initiation at the tooth root regions. It was established that the failure was caused due to improper assembly of the gear. A detailed analysis of the failure is presented in this paper.     

Failure Analysis of Gearbox and Clutch Shaft from a Marine Engine

This article presents metallurgical failure analysis of a gearbox shaft and a clutch shaft from a marine engine. The gearbox shaft was made of low alloy steel, and the clutch shafts were components made of carbon steel. Fracture surface examination revealed circumferential ratchet marks with the presence of inward progressive beach marks suggesting rotary-bending fatigue failure in the case of gearbox shaft. The star-shaped pattern on the clutch shaft fracture surface suggested that the failure was due to torsional overloading which might have initiated at corrosion pits visible around the fracture surface. The gearbox shaft experienced rotational bending stresses which induced fatigue failure because the fatigue strength of the alloy was too low. The fatigue failure of the gearbox shaft led to the torsional failure of the corroded clutch shaft. The sudden, high level failure load on the clutch shaft occurred when the gear box shaft failed.     

Material-based failure analysis of a helicopter rotor hub

A Lynx helicopter from the Royal Netherlands Navy lost a rotor blade during preparation for take-off. The blade loss was due to failure of a rotor hub arm by fatigue. The arm was integral to the titanium alloy rotor hub. An extensive material-based failure analysis covered the hub manufacture, service damage, and estimates of service stresses. There was no evidence for failure due to poor material properties. However, fractographic and fracture mechanics analyses of the service failure, a full-scale test failure, and specimen test failures indicated that the service fatigue stress history could have been more severe than anticipated. This possibility was subsequently supported by a separate investigation of the assumed and actual fatigue loads and stresses.     

Failure of two overhead crane shafts

The failure analysis of two overhead crane shafts is presented: the failure of an overhead crane drive shaft and the failure of an overhead crane gearbox shaft, due to rotating-bending fatigue. The fracture of the overhead crane drive shaft originated in small radius fillet between two different diameters of the shaft. A new shaft was made with a larger-size fillet, resulting in reduced stress concentration in this region. The failure of the overhead crane gearbox shaft originated at the intersection of two stress raisers, at the change in shaft diameter and in the keyway corner. A new shaft was made with a larger-size fillet and a larger size radius of the keyways corner to minimize stress concentration in this section. In both cases the installed couplings were replaced by gear couplings in order to allow parallel and angular misalignment as well as to avoid additional load due to misalignment. The analysis shows that the fatigue life can be significantly increased with a simple change in the structural details.     

Dynamic failure analysis of renewable energy systems in the remote offshore environments

For effective integrity management of marine renewable energy systems in the dynamic and uncertain ocean environments, understanding the failure dynamics is crucial. The cost of investment in marine/offshore renewable energy infrastructures and the associated cost due to failure and loss of energy production necessitate a predictive monitoring methodology that is dynamic and adaptive. This paper presents an integrated multi-state pure-birth-pure-death Markovian-net profit value model for the offshore turbine subsystem failure analysis and its cost-based consequences. The integrated model captures the offshore turbine subsystem's dynamic failure states and its economic implications due to the cost of energy loss and downtime for the period under consideration. The model applies a phase-type exponential distribution to describe the monotonic state of failure. The methodology is demonstrated with an offshore wind turbine gearbox, and it captures the dynamic state of the system and its failure mechanisms. The cumulative effect of the subelements deterioration decreases the gearbox performance by over 35% within the first 2 years of operation.     

Stress corrosion cracking of a 60 MW steam turbine rotor

The paper presents a root cause analysis of a steam turbine rotor blade groove cracking. The scope of analyses included material testing and mechanical integrity calculations. In scope of material testing, fracture microstructure was assessed and basic mechanical property characteristics of the rotor discs were determined. In scope of integrity analyses, the stress fields in the blade grooves were calculated and the possibility of cracking due to different mechanisms was assessed. Both calculations and material tests confirmed the stress corrosion cracking to be the root cause of the rotor failure. This was a basis for proposing the rotor discs repair by overlay welding with a lower strength material and modifications to the groove geometry.     

Partial Load: A Key Factor Resulting in the Failure of Gear in the Wind Turbine Gearbox

Gearbox is a critical component in the wind turbine system which can transfer wind energy into wind power to replace some fossil energy in order to reduce the environmental pollution. A 1.5-MW wind turbine gearbox failed after about 5 years of service; however, the design life of the gearbox is 20 years. In this paper, the failure mechanism of the gearbox was investigated based on standard failure analysis procedures and finite element (FE) simulation. The failure of gear could be attributed to fatigue fracture, because typical macroscopic features—beach marks and ratcheting marks—could be observed on the fracture surface. Furthermore, contact fatigue caused the formation of pits on the failed working tooth flank, even brought some microcracks. It should be emphasized that fatigue pitting mainly concentrated at the left end of the failed gear. Based on the physical, chemical analysis, and FE simulation, the failure of gear should be essentially ascribed to abnormal load rather than the material defects. Finally, based on the failure characteristics, partial load should be responsible for the failure of the gear in the wind turbine gearbox.     

A Case Study on Fatigue Failure of a Transmission Gearbox Input Shaft

In this paper, a root cause analysis of premature failure of a gearbox input shaft, manufactured of AISI 1045-H, was performed through standard procedures for failure analysis. Shaft failed on cross oil hole through a helical fracture and therefore did not meet bogie 100,000 cycles during the verification with 10 Hz frequency cyclic testing. The fracture in the oil hole implied evidence of fatigue (i.e., beach marks on the fracture surface were clearly visible). Prior to improving the fatigue life and suggesting required remedial actions, mechanism of failure has to be understood, especially the initiating point of cracking. To this end, chemical analysis, microstructural characterization, fractography, hardness measurements, and finite element simulation were used to assess the nature of fracture in detail. The fractography analysis showed that fatigue beach marks originate from transition zone of the case on the cross oil hole. This is possibly due to the fact that torsional strength in this area is lower than torsional fatigue strength which leads to fatigue crack initiation, crack growth, and final fracture. At the end of this paper, proper remedial actions have been proposed.     

基于LMD的时频分析方法及其机械故障诊断应用研究

如何有效地从振动信号中提取有用信息成分一直以来都是故障诊断领域研究的热点。局部均值分解(Local Mean Decomposition, LMD)是一种新的信号自适应分解方法。本文研究基于LMD的瞬时频率求解、时频分析及其故障诊断的应用。LMD的时频分析方法成功提取出实验室转子碰摩特征以及实际低速变载轧机齿轮局部故障信息,这证实了方法的有效性。     

A Comparative Study of Various Methods of Gear Faults Diagnosis

Investigating gear damages using vibration signal is a subject of a high interest, because gears vibration signals are complex and difficult to understand. A failure diagnosis of gearbox based on Fourier analysis of the vibration produced by speed reducers has shown its limits in terms of spectral resolution. In the present paper, a comparative study of the performances of various different methods of fault diagnosis of helicopter gearbox gear is carried out. The results are highlighted on the basis of real data recorded during a helicopter flight and have showed that cepstral analysis is most effective technique in detecting gearbox gear faults.     

转向器支座强度的试验测试和仿真分析

客车转向器支座常因焊缝疲劳裂纹而失效,目前还未能直接测得角焊焊缝处的应力分布和大小。该文将试验测试方法和有限元分析相结合,通过对支座在不同工况下测点的实测应力与有限元仿真结果进行对比分析,得出两者之间的误差,由此推算出在最大载荷时支座焊缝处的实际应力分布和大小,其理论误差小于15%。通过优化支座的结构设计,仿真分析结果显示整个支座的最大应力值可降低63%以上,该优化设计方案已经成功地应用到支座的改进设计与生产制造中。     

基于MOMEDA和增强倒频谱的风电机组齿轮箱多故障诊断方法

风电机组齿轮箱结构复杂,当齿轮、轴承存在多故障时,由于各故障强弱不同、故障间相互耦合及噪声干扰,造成故障诊断准确率低及漏诊问题。提出了一种基于多点最优最小熵解卷积(multipoint optimal minimum entropy deconvolution adjusted,MOMEDA)和增强倒频谱的风电机组齿轮箱多故障诊断方法。依据齿轮和轴承不同部位的故障特征频率设置合理的解卷积周期,利用MOMEDA对原始信号进行预处理;再通过增强倒频谱进一步抑制噪声干扰和增强故障特征;将增强倒频谱中的突出成分与齿轮箱故障特征频率对比,判断故障类型。实际风电机组齿轮箱多故障振动试验数据分析结果表明,该方法可以有效地提取出齿轮箱多故障特征信息。     

Failure analysis and optimization design of a centrifuge rotor

Centrifuge rotors are designed for high service life duty and should stand against 2 times the maximum operation speed in a spin tester in terms of the manufacture’s standard. A centrifuge rotor prototype had burst before reaching 2 times the maximum operation speed in an over-speed spin testing, therefore, failure analysis was required to determine the cause of the burst and recommendations for the structure optimization were needed to improve the rotor integrated strength. After the chemical analysis and the microstructure identity, a finite element model of 1/24 rotor under centrifugal load was adopted for mechanical stress analysis. The analysis indicated that local stress peaks occurred on the top round between the receptacle and the hub and on the edges of the tube cavities. By comparing computational and experimental results, it is revealed that the rotor fractured on two regions one after another when the peak stress exceeded the ultimate strength of the material. Consequently, some recommendations were made for the structure optimization to improve the rotor safety performance. The peak stress was reduced below the allowable material strength margin with increasing the fillet radius of the round and decreasing the depth of the liquid gather groove. The burst of the redesigned rotor was eliminated in the later over-speed spin testing.     

变速箱二轴的断裂分析

汽车变速箱二轴在工作中发生多起断裂事故。采用金相检验、扫描电镜和化学成分分析等手段，对断裂变速箱二轴进行了检验分析。结果表明，轴的断口具有明显的疲劳特征，疲劳源位于二轴花键槽根部。由于渗碳淬火工艺不当，在二轴花键槽根部的组织中产生了网状碳化物和粗大的针状马氏体，在外力作用下形成沿晶显微裂纹并扩展，是导致二轴疲劳断裂的主要原因。     

An air crash due to failure of compressor rotor

A fighter aircraft crashed in an accident. Initial investigations pointed out that the accident was due to the failure of compressor rotor. The engine had a nine-stage axial flow compressor in which the nine disks were joined together through riveting. After accident a number of blades and broken pieces of outer ring of the 9th stage compressor disc were found scattered on the runway and near the crashed aircraft. On the removal of the engine from the aircraft, the mid casing was found ruptured. Initial investigation concluded that the failure of 9th stage disc of compressor rotor caused the aircraft crash.Failure analysis of 9th stage disk showed that the disk failed due to fatigue which started from one of the six holes present on the disk. The origin of fatigue crack was machining marks, which were present on the surface of the disk. The crack traveled ∼30 mm in length before final catastrophic failure. Cracks were also observed around other holes on the disk; they were starting from machining marks. The failure of ring and blades were subsequent.     

反击式破碎机双转子断裂失效分析

利用光学金相显微镜、扫描电镜和热处理实验手段对反击式破碎机双转子断裂进行了分析。分析结果表明,其断裂属于解理和沿晶复合断裂,断口解理面较大,组织中有大块自由铁素体和粗大魏氏组织。此双转子未经热处理就投入使用以及该转子存在的缩松和气孔是导致该双转子断裂失效的主要原因。     

Failure Analysis of Steam Turbine Rotor Disk

This article presents an investigation into causes of failure of rotor disk of an 8.25-MW capacity steam turbine, which failed catastrophically. Four pieces of the rotor disk detached from the tenth-stage disk of the turbine rotor during this failure. Visual inspection, chemical analysis, macro- and microscopic analysis of the failed rotor disk, analysis of the operational data, and the history of the rotor operation indicated that the failure could be attributed to stress concentrations at macropores and regions of segregation in the disk. Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) subsequently took place in the regions of stress concentration because the steam in the turbine contained chloride and potassium. The SCC produced a network of cracks associated with the macro- and microporosities. It was recommended that the disk fabrication processes ensure a high-quality microstructure and that operational monitoring of the composition of steam be initiated to ensure that the chlorides and potassium concentrations are maintained below a specified level.     

Failure analysis of components in compressor vane

The paper presents a failure analysis of components damaged in compressor vane. In order to investigate the damage mechanism and failure causes of components, macroscopic and microscopic observations, microstructural investigations, chemical analysis and hardness measurement have been performed. The results show that the damaged components are caused by fractured blades of 1st stage rotor. In all 1st stage rotor blades, 1^# blade is fractured firstly, and is troublemaker in this incident. The fracture mechanism of 1^# blade fractured from blade root is due to first order bending vibration fatigue damage. The microstructure, hardness and chemical compositions of 1^# blade fracture, all which coincide with technical requirements. The bad shot peening qualities in the surface near blade fracture have important influence on fatigue failure.     

Root Cause Analysis of Cracking in Shaft End and Coupling of a High-Power Generator

Failure analyses and root cause determination were carried out on the rotor of a high-power generator of gas–diesel dual fuel which presented cracking due to torsional fatigue in its end (region of section change and coupling), after 30,000 h of service. The generator of 307 MW–3000 rpm has a rotor (shaft of 400 mm Ø) manufactured in a proprietary steel grade equivalent to ASTM A470 type, Class 7 of high hardenability. It was reported that the equipment control system showed, in service, a high level of vibrations, not admissible for continuing the operation. First, and during the equipment shutdown for inspection, the presence of cracks, slant to the rotor shaft, was detected by means of visual inspection and dye penetrant test. The failure region corresponds to the zone of coupling–shaft joint, linked by means of fixation by interference, whereas the cracking spread on two fracture planes at 45° with respect to the rotor shaft. On this zone, where cracking started, a severe fretting corrosion damage was evidenced. The characterization and identification of present damage mechanisms were conducted through macrographic, fractographic, SEM, EDS, chemical analyses, and mechanical tests. It was recognized that from the damage by fretting corrosion, fatigue micro-cracks were produced that spread due to service tensions by a mechanism of fretting fatigue. The fatigue fracture propagation was developed into two orthogonal planes at 45° from the longitudinal shaft, which reveals an inversion in the loading condition, only justifiable by torsional vibrations that were assigned to a torsional resonance typical of the system dynamics. It was considered that the torsional vibrations cause micro-movements between components, promoting fretting corrosion and the subsequent fretting fatigue that finally induced the failure by high-cycle torsional fatigue with low-stress amplitude.     

Failure of a steam turbine rotor due to circumferential crack growth influenced by temperature and steady torsion

High cycle fatigue as a final mechanism of failure in rotating systems, especially steam turbines, is a serious phenomenon. Incomplete information of its effective parameters could lead into catastrophic failure of the rotor. In high cycle fatigue, one of the most effective factors in crack growth is high temperature. In fact, a high-temperature change alters mechanical characteristics of material including their fracture mechanic. Therefore, the investigation of crack growth of fatigue and crack front development in various steam temperatures requires a careful consideration of the different parts of the rotor along the steam turbine rotor. This study investigated the propagation of a circumferential crack at three points of the turbine rotor in 24,149 and 260 ^∘ C under the influence of rotor weight loading. In addition, the study addressed torque as another important parameter in crack growth which is caused by steam pressure in the turbine. Through the obtained results, a crack front shape is achieved which can be used in rotor vibration analysis. Reviewing the related literature indicated that crack growth rate associated with alternative mode I loading in the presence of steady mode III loading is reduced. To investigation this phenomenon, the study considered roughness induced crack closure due to steady torsion and its corresponding equations by analytical method were derived. Finally, the study investigated the influence of roughness on crack growth rate in abovementioned three points of the rotor.