International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18

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International Journal of Fatigue

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijfatigue

Micro-pitting fatigue lives of lubricated point contacts: Experiments

and model validation
Sheng Li ⇑, Ahmet Kahraman
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, 201 W. 19th Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study employs the two-disk rolling contact fatigue test methodology to investigate the impacts of
Received 19 September 2012 various parameters on micro-pitting performance of lubricated point contacts of rough surfaces. A test
Received in revised form 12 November 2012 matrix that spans the operating ranges of the sun-planet gear pair of a wind turbine gearbox is con-
Accepted 1 December 2012
structed using the Fractional Factorial technique to rank the order of the influences of contact pressure,
Available online 12 December 2012
rolling velocity, slide-to-roll ratio, roughness amplitude and run-in process. The test results indicate that
a run-in stage with higher contact pressure and lower rolling velocity reduce the amount of micro-pits.
Keywords:
For the normal operating stage that follows, lower roughness amplitude, lower slide-to-roll ratio, higher
Rolling contact fatigue
Micro-pitting
rolling velocity and lower contact pressures are observed to lead to reduced micro-pitting activity. To
Life prediction quantify micro-pitting failure, the micro-pitting severity index (MSI) which is defined as the cumulative
Surface roughness probability of fatigue failure is proposed. The micro-pitting test outcomes are compared to the predic-
tions of a recently developed physics-based micro-pitting model [1] to describe the failure mechanism
and assess the model accuracy.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Micro-pitting of contact surfaces of both gears and bearings of
automotive, aerospace and wind turbine gearboxes has been a ma-
jor problem that adversely impacts the reliability of products. The
process of micro-pitting progressively alters the geometries of the
contact surfaces, affecting the functionality of gearboxes. Under
certain operating conditions, the amount of micro-pits might stabi-
lize after a certain number of loading cycles as the surface devia-
tions due to micro-pitting redistribute and relieve the contact
pressure. However, the continued cyclic contact can result in the
fatigue failure in the form of macro-pitting, which often initiates
form the boundaries of the micro-pitted zones [2,3]. On the other
hand, the profile changes of gear teeth due to excessive micro-pit-
ting activity increase the motion transmission error amplitudes to
cause elevated vibration levels and dynamic tooth contact forces,
further accelerating the rate of micro-pitting.
Extensive experimental studies have been conducted in litera-
ture to investigate the influences of various potential factors on mi-
cro-pitting. Using a twin-disk set-up, Tokuda et al. [4] showed that
surface roughness was a key parameter influencing micro-pitting
even under full film lubrication condition. Ariura et al. [5] studied
the roughness effect on micro-pitting for gear contacts, confirming
the critical role of surface roughness. Webster and Norbart [6] per-
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 614 247 8688; fax: +1 614 292 3163.
E-mail address: li.600@osu.edu (S. Li).
formed twin-disk fatigue tests and found micro-pits tended to ap-
pear on the surface with negative sliding. It was also shown that
the reduction of micro-pitting could be achieved through the
reduction of slide-to-roll ratio and/or roughness amplitude. How-
ever, increasing the k ratio (the ratio of film thickness to roughness
amplitude) by simply increasing the film thickness while keeping
the roughness amplitude unchanged had limited benefits in mi-
cro-pitting reduction. Ahlroos et al. [7] performed the fatigue tests
using a twin-disk machine to study the influences of different steel
materials, surface roughness amplitudes, surface treatments (sur-
face hardness and coatings) as well as lubricants on micro-pitting.
Several other experimental works focused on the effects of lubri-
cant additives on micro-pitting. Brechot et al. [8] reported that
anti-wear (AW) and extreme-pressure (EP) additives typically
aggravated micro-pitting. A study by Laine et al. [9] suggested that
friction modifier agents alleviated the occurrence of micro-pits
through the reduction of boundary friction. With environmental
concerns in mind, various biodegradable lubricants were tested
by Cardoso et al. [10] for their micro-pitting performance.
In a recent paper, these authors proposed a physics-based mi-
cro-pitting prediction methodology [1]. This methodology em-
ployed a mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) model of a
point contact [11] to determine the transient surface traction dis-
tributions. These surface traction distributions were applied to a
boundary element based rough surface stress prediction model to
find the histories of the multi-axial stress components for all the
material points passing through the contact. The boundary

0142-1123/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijfatigue.2012.12.003
10 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18
element model included the full description of the microroughness
geometries in the stress computation such that surface asperity in-
duced local stress concentrations can be captured fully. The fatigue
damage was then evaluated using a multi-axial fatigue criterion as
described in Refs. [1–3].
This study focuses on the experimental investigation of micro-
pitting with two main objectives. The first objective is to quantify
the influences of the contact pressure, rolling velocity, slide-to-roll
ratio, surface roughness amplitude and a run-in process on micro-
pitting failure with the ranges of these parameters to be represen-
tative of gears, establishing a statistically meaningful data set. The
second objective is to simulate the experiments using the micro-
pitting model of Li and Kahraman [1] in order to assess the accu-
racy of the model through comparing its predictions to the results
of micro-pitting experiments.
A test matrix is defined using the Fractional Factorial technique
to bring certain statistical meaning to the measurements with rel-
atively small number of test runs [12]. The operating conditions
are defined based on the sun-planet gear mesh of a wind turbine
gearbox [13]. The tests are performed on a two-disk rolling contact
fatigue machine with the contact pairs whose surfaces are axially
ground in order to simulate the surface roughness textures of gears
in relation to the direction of rolling. To quantify the degree of mi-
cro-pitting after a certain number of contact cycles, Nf0, the micro-
pitting severity index (MSI), W, is defined as the cumulative prob-
ability of micro-pit crack initiation at Nf0. The probability distribu-
tions are constructed using the predicted fatigue lives [1]. Noting
that W is equivalent to the micro-pitting area percentage, the pre-
dictions are allowed to compare with the measurements to show
reasonably good agreement.
2. Micro-pitting experiments
2.1. Test set-up and specimens
The two-disk set-up as shown in Fig. 1a is employed in this
study to evaluate the influences of various potential factors,
including contact pressure, rolling velocity, slide-to-roll ratio, sur-
face roughness amplitude and run-in process, on the fatigue failure
of micro-pitting. The larger component of the contact pair in
Fig. 1a, referred as the disk, is fastened axially against its shaft
shoulder using a retaining lock nut. The smaller one of the two
disks, referred as the roller, is shrink-fitted onto its shaft and in-
stalled into the pivoted loading arm, which is pushed against the
disk by a pneumatic cylinder. The lubricant is provided through
an overhead lubrication jet in an into-the-mesh manner. The roller
and the disk are driven independently by two AC motors at the
rotational speeds of x1 and x2, respectively. Given d1 and d2 as
the diameters of the roller and the disk, the tangential surface
velocities of v 1 ¼ 12 d1 x1 and v 2 ¼ 12 d2 x2 are adjusted through x1
and x2 to create a certain degree of relative sliding at the contact
interface. Defining the rolling and sliding velocities of the contact,
respectively, as
1
vr ¼ ðv 1 þ v 2 Þ; ð1aÞ
2 Factorials technique [12]. This Design of Experiment (DOE) ap-
v s ¼ v 1  v 2; ð1bÞ
The relative sliding at the contact interface is defined by the
dimensionless slide-to-roll ratio as
v s 2ðv 1  v 2 Þ
SR ¼ ¼ ð1cÞ
vr v1 þ v2
The roller specimen is designed as a simple cylinder with no ax-
ial crown while the disk has a circular axial crown of 76.2 mm ra-
dius in order to provide the contact of elliptical shape. The
(a)
Lubrication
jet
Disk Loading
Roller arm
Pneumatic
cylinder
(b)
v2 v1
Disk Roller
surface surface
Fig. 1. (a) The twin-disk contact set-up and (b) close-up view of the disk and roller
surfaces showing the lay direction of the roughness.
diameters of the roller and the disk are d1 = 31.75 mm and
d2 = 57.15 mm, respectively. With these diameters and axial
crown, b/a = 3.74 where a and b are the Hertzian half-widths of
the contact in the rolling (tangential) and axial directions, respec-
tively. The specimens are made out of AISI 4620 low carbon gear
steel and are case hardened to a surface hardness of 60–62 HRC
to represent a typical gear tooth surface hardness. A special surface
finishing process was developed to simulate the roughness lay
direction of the actual ground gear tooth surface which is perpen-
dicular to the direction of sliding, as the previous rolling contact fa-
tigue tests that simulated gear contacts found such treatment to be
necessary [2]. The axially directed roughness pattern on the roller
and disk surfaces as shown in Fig. 1b are the direct results of this
special finishing process that ensures not only the amplitudes
but also the directionality of ground gear surface roughness can
be simulated. Two batches of specimens with the average root-
mean-square (RMS) surface roughness amplitudes of 0.3 lm and
0.5 lm (composite roughness amplitudes of about 0.4 lm and
0.7 lm) are procured. These roughness values are representative
of roughness ranges of typical ground gear tooth surfaces.
2.2. Design of experiments test matrix and test procedure
Table 1 lists the test matrix constructed using the Fractional
proach uses a fraction of all the combinations of levels for all the
factors considers, allowing statistically meaningful measurements
with substantially reduced number of test runs. In order to study
the influence of run-in on micro-pitting occurrence, a run-in stage
is implemented before each normal test stage. This is especially
relevant to wind turbine gearboxes that are put through a run-in
process. The run-in process that consists of 0.2 million roller con-
tact cycles is followed by the normal test stage of 20 million roller
contact cycles. The same type of lubricant (A typical wind turbine
gear fluid, Castrol Optigear Synthetic X320) is used for both the
 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18 11

Table 1 eter are defined as ph = 1 and 1.5 GPa, vr = 3.9 and 7.8 m/s,
Rolling contact fatigue test matrix defined by using Fractional Factorials. SR = 0.2 and 0.65, and Rq = 0.4 and 0.7 lm. For the run-in stage,
Test # p0h v 0r ph (GPa) vr (m/s) SR Rq (lm) U (%) p0h and v 0r are determined in relation to their respective normal test
ph vr
stage values as p0h =ph ¼ 0:6 and 0.8, and v 0r =v r ¼ 0:5 and 1.5 for the
1 0.6 1.5 1 3.9 0.2 0.4 0.02
low and high levels, respectively. The inlet lubricant temperature is
2 0.8 0.5 1.5 3.9 0.2 0.4 0.07
3 0.8 0.5 1 3.9 0.65 0.7 0.41
maintained at 95 °C for both the run-in and normal test stages. Ta-
4 0.6 0.5 1 7.8 0.2 0.7 3.06 ble 1 lists the test matrix of a total of eight tests defined by the
5 0.6 1.5 1.5 3.9 0.65 0.7 28.10 Fractional Factorial technique.
6 0.8 1.5 1 7.8 0.65 0.4 0.00 Depending on the roller speed of each test, the testing time
7 0.6 0.5 1.5 7.8 0.65 0.4 0.00
ranges from days to weeks. During each test, the machine is paused
8 0.8 1.5 1.5 7.8 0.2 0.7 2.71
periodically to allow interim inspections of the specimens, which
include the circumferential surface roughness measurement using
run-in and normal test stages. Six specific parameters are consid- a surface roughness profiler (Taylor Hobson Form Talysurf 60), the
ered in the experimental study as: profile measurement in the axial direction using a gear Coordinate
Measurement Machine, and the micro-pitted area measurement
 Hertzian pressure p0h of the run-in stage, using a digital microscope. The upper cutoff for the ground surface
 rolling velocity v 0r of the run-in stage, roughness measurements is set at 0.8 mm. These inspections are
 Hertzian pressure ph of the normal test stage, performed for three predefined locations that are positioned 120°
 rolling velocity vr of the normal test stage, apart from each other circumferentially. For the run-in stage, such
 slide-to-roll ratio SR (run-in and normal test stages have the inspections are performed before, in the middle and after the run-
same SR), and in process. For the normal test stage, interim inspections are car-
 initialqffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
composite ffi RMS surface roughness amplitude ried out every 2 million roller contact cycles.
Rq ¼ R2q1 þ R2q2 , where Rq1 and Rq2 are the RMS roughness
amplitudes for roller and disk, respectively.
2.3. Micro-pitting test results
According to the operating condition of the intended wind tur-
bine gearbox application, the low and high levels of these param- The last column of Table 1 lists a micro-pitting parameter U,
which represents the average value (of the three inspection posi-

Position I Position II Position III

v1

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 2. Micro-scope images (100 magnification) of the roller surface at three different locations positioned 120° away from each other circumferentially for Test 5: (a)
4 million cycles, (b) 12 million cycles, and (c) 20 million cycles.
12 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18

Run-in stage Run-in stage

2 2
1 1
0 Rq1 = 0.65μm 0 Rq2 = 0.62 μm
-1 -1
-2 0 million cycles -2 (a) 0 million cycles
(a)
-3 -3

2 2
1
1
Rq1 = 0.53μm 0 Rq2 = 0.58 μm
0 -1
-1 0.2 million cycles 0.2 million cycles
-2 -2 (b)
(b) -3
-3
Normal test stage Normal test stage
2 2
1
R1 [μm]

R 2 [μm]
Rq1 = 0.64 μm 0 Rq2 = 0.47 μm
0 -1
-1 4 million cycles -2 (c) 4 million cycles
-2 (c) -3
-3
2 2
1
1
Rq1 = 0.72 μm 0 Rq2 = 0.47 μm
0 -1
-1 12 million cycles
12 million cycles -2 (d)
-2 (d) -3
-3
2
2 1
0 Rq2 = 0.42 μm
1
0 Rq1 = 0.66 μm -1 20 million cycles
-1 20 million cycles
-2 (e)
-2 -3
(e) 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
-3
1 1.5 2 2.5 3
x [mm]
x [mm]
Fig. 4. Measured disk surface roughness profiles in the circumferential direction for
Fig. 3. Measured roller surface roughness profiles in the circumferential direction Test 5.
for Test 5.

Position I Position II Position III

v1

(a)

(b)

(c)

Fig. 5. Micro-scope images (100 magnification) of the roller surface at three different locations positioned 120° away from each other circumferentially for Test 4: (a)
4 million cycles, (b) 12 million cycles, and (c) 20 million cycles.
 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18
tions) of the micro-pitted area percentage. This area percentage is
defined as the ratio of the micro-pitted area to the total inspected
area. With the magnification level set at 100, each microscope
image of each inspection position covers an area of
(1.74)(1.30) = 2.26 mm2 with the dimension of 1.74 mm being in
the rolling direction. These inspections are performed at three pre-
defined circumferential angles of 0°, 120° and 240°. The low and
high loading levels as defined in Table 1 corresponds to the Hertz-
ian zone size of 0.34 mm and 0.51 mm, respectively, in the rolling
direction, and 1.27 mm and 1.91 mm, respectively, in the axial
direction. Although the microscope does not capture the entire
Hertzian zone under the high loading condition, the area coverage
of 2.26 mm2 at multiple circumferential positions are believed to
be sufficient to obtain representative measurements of U.
Micro-pits show as dark spots on the digital microscope images
of the contact surfaces. These areas are examined under greater
magnifications (200 and 500) to verify they are indeed pitted
zones of micro-scale and are then highlighted in red as shown be-
low to quantify the total micro-pitted area. Any circumferential
wear scratches appear as lines in the rolling direction. As such,
these wear scars have no resemblance to micro-pits and can be
easily excluded from the micro-pits quantification.
In Table 1, it is observed that Test #5, which corresponds to the
high levels of ph, SR, Rq and v 0r while the low levels of p0h and vr, is
the most severe micro-pitting case with U = 28.1%. The micro-pit-
ted roller surfaces of Test #5 are shown in Fig. 2 for 4, 12 and
20 million roller contact cycles of testing at three different circum-
Position I
(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 6. Micro-scope images (100 magnification) of the roller surface at three different locations positioned 120° away from each other circumferentially for Test 6: (a)
4 million cycles, (b) 12 million cycles, and (c) 20 million cycles.
13
ferential positions. In these images, the micro-pits are highlighted
in red. It is seen that the severity of micro-pitting is not uniform at
different circumferential locations, such that it is necessary to
measure at a number of positions and use the average value as
the measure. The measured surface roughness profiles for the roll-
er and the disk at Position I are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively.
The roughness amplitude of the roller is observed to decrease dur-
ing the run-in stage. The asperity peaks are rounded off in the pro-
cess while the deep valleys are preserved. For the normal test
stage, however, Rq1 is found to increase in comparison to the after
run-in roughness amplitude, which is caused by the removal of
surface material in the form of numerous micro-pits. This observa-
tion is not evident on the disk surface, which experiences positive
sliding. Fig. 4 shows that Rq2 decreases in the run-in stage and is
further reduced during the normal test stage. Due to the high
slide-to-roll ratio of Test #5, the disk actually experiences more
contact cycles than the roller does. However, only very limited
number of micro-pits are produced on the disk surface, having neg-
ligible influence on Rq2 during the normal test stage. Figs. 5 and 6
are the microscope images for Tests #4 and #6 as defined in Ta-
ble 1. Test #4 produces a small amount of micro-pits (U = 3.1%)
while Test #6 has no sign of micro-pit (U = 0) at the completion
of the 20 million roller contact cycle test. Several circumferential
wear scars that are parallel to the rolling direction are also ob-
served in Fig. 6.
Using U at the end of each test as the response, the main effects
model of U ~ ¼ b þ P6 b g is constructed. Here, U ~ is the estimated
0 i¼1 i i
Position II Position III
v1
14 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18

10 tions and displacements along the boundary of the contact body

7.5 determined, the near surface multi-axial stress fields are calculated
using the boundary elements approach. In the process, the singular
5
and near singular behaviors involved in the boundary integral
2.5 equations are eliminated through efficient numerical methods.
0 The predicted means and amplitudes of the stress components of
0.6 0.8 0.5 1.5 1.0 1.5
every material point that passes through the contact are used to
vr′ vr
Φ [%]

ph′ ph p h [GPa]
evaluate the fatigue damages according to a multi-axial fatigue cri-
10 terion. The detailed predictions of the mixed lubrication behavior,
the near surface stress distributions and the crack nucleation fati-
7.5
gue life distributions are illustrated here by using the simulation of
5
Test #5 in Table 1 (which is most severely micro-pitted). The pre-
2.5 dicted micro-pitting severity indexes of all the eight tests are com-
0 pared with the measured micro-pitting area percentages to
3.9 7.8 -0.65 -0.2 0.4 0.7 demonstrate the model capabilities as well as any potential
vr [m/s] SR Rq [μm] improvement.
The dimension of the surface computational grid is defined such
Fig. 7. Main effects plot for the DOE screening process using Fractional Factorials as
that 1.875a 6 x 6 1.125a and 1.5b 6 y 6 1.5b, where a and b
defined in Table 1.
represent the Hertzian half widths in the x (rolling) and y (axial)
directions, respectively. The mesh density of 256  256 is used,
average value of the micro-pitted area percentage, and g1–g6 repre- which results in the mesh sizes of Dx = 3 lm and Dy = 11 lm. Since
sent the low or high level of the six factors of p0h =ph , v 0r =v r , ph, vr, SR the variation of the roughness profile in the y direction is limited
and Rq, respectively (gi = 1 for low level and gi = 1 for high level).
The absolute value of the slope bi indicates the extent of impor-
tance of the factor gi. From the measurements, it is determined that 5
10
b0 = 0.043, b1 = 0.035, b2 = 0.034, b3 = 0.034, b4 = 0.029,
b5 = 0.028 and b6 = 0.043. The surface roughness amplitude with 4
10
the maximum absolute slope of |b6| = 0.043 is found to be the most
influential factor for the operating condition range considered in 3
10
this study. The corresponding main effects plot of the six contact
parameters is shown in Fig. 7, in which, the influence of each factor 2
10
η [Pas]

on micro-pitting is determined by holding the other factors con-

stant at zero [12]. The reference line of U ~ ¼ 4:3% is the overall
1
10
mean of the eight tests. It is found that a run-in stage with rela-
tively large contact pressure and relatively small rolling velocity 0
effectively reduces the occurrence of micro-pits. The potential rea- 10
sons include (i) gradual surface polishing, which alleviates the -1
stress concentrations induced by local roughness interactions for 10
the normal test stage, (ii) the formation of a tribo-film with lower
-2
boundary friction that reduces the surface shear, (iii) the raise of 10
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2
the local surface hardness through work hardening, and (iv) crea- p [GPa]
tion of local compressive residual stresses that introduce compres-
sive mean stresses. For the normal operating stage, lower contact Fig. 8. Pressure–viscosity relationship used in this study.
pressure and higher rolling velocity are observed to lead to the
reduction of micro-pitting, which is due to the reduced multi-axial
stress amplitudes under the lower loading condition and the re-
0.15
duced asperity contact activities resulted from the thicker fluid
film under the higher rolling velocity condition. Additionally, smal- A
ler roughness amplitude and lower sliding (smaller absolute value
of SR) are shown to suppress the occurrence of micro-pits. The re- 0.12
duced roughness peaks decrease the local stress concentrations.
The low sliding condition alleviates the shear thinning of lubricant
film, reducing the surface asperity interactions. 0.09
B
Ca
3. Simulation of rolling contact fatigue experiments and model 0.06
validation

The physics-based micro-pitting model proposed by Li and

0.03
Kahraman [1] is employed in this study to simulate the micro-pit-
ting experiments presented in Section 2. This model determines
C
the surface normal and tangential tractions using a mixed elasto-
hydrodynamic lubrication formulation for rough surface point con- 0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
tacts [11]. The induced surface displacements are computed nϑ
through a boundary element based formulation which fully de-
scribes the local microsurface roughness geometry. With both trac- Fig. 9. Variation of asperity contact area ratio with time for Test 5.
 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18 15

due to the axially oriented roughness textures, this relatively large
Dy is considered to be sufficient. The time increment of D# = 2Dx/
vr is used for a total of N0 = 1000 time steps, such that the entire
analysis covers about 4 mm traveling distance of the roller surface.
For the wind turbine gear fluid (Castrol Optigear Synthetic X320)
used in this study, its density is roughly measured to be
q0 = 812 kg/m3 at the inlet temperature of 95 °C. Due to the lack
of the data of the viscosity dependence on pressure for Optigear
Synthtic X320, the property of a similar lubricant (Optigear Synth-
tic A320) whose ambient viscosity g0 = 0.0276 Pas and pressure–
viscosity coefficient a = 14.3 GPa1 is used in the simulation in-
stead. The Roelands pressure–viscosity relationship [14] is as-
sumed as shown in Fig. 8 because of these limited oil property
measurements. To take into account the effects of the surface
roughness variation in the run-in stage (the round-off of asperity
peaks), the measured roughness profiles at the end of the run-in
process (Figs. 3b and 4b) are used in the simulation.
For the determination of the severity of asperity interaction
activities, the area ratio of asperity contact Ca, which is defined
as the ratio of the total asperity contact area to the nominal Hertz-
ian area is plotted as a function of time step n0 (n0 2[1, N0]) in Fig. 9
(for Test #5). The average value of Ca over this time period is about
6.5% (i.e. 6.5% of the Hertzian area experiences asperity contacts on
average). For the three example time instants of n0 = 148, 506 and

Fig. 10. Mixed EHL predictions of normal contact pressure (left column) and tangential shear (right column) for time steps of (a) n9 = 148 (A in Fig. 9), (b) n9 = 506 (B in Fig. 9)
and (c) n9 = 657 (C in Fig. 9) for Test 5.
16 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18

657 (denoted as points A, B and C in Fig. 9), which respectively rep- log 10 ( N f )
resent the instances of high (Ca = 13.2), median (Ca = 6.5) and low 1 14
(Ca = 1.7) asperity interaction, the predicted normal contact pres-
sure and tangential surface shear distributions are shown in 0
Fig. 10. The pressure fluctuations are observed in the distributions
for all the three time instants, and the surface shears are seen to -1 12.06
spike up wherever the film thickness breaks down (a typical
boundary friction coefficient value of 0.15 is used in asperity con- -2

tact areas). As Ca decreases, the asperity contact friction reduces
evidently. The peaks of the normal pressure, however, can still be
relatively high because of the surface discontinuities. For instances,
although the Ca value at point C is substantially smaller than that at
point B, the maximum local pressures at these time instants are
quite comparable.
With the surface loading condition as illustrated in Fig. 10, the
surface and near surface stress state for every material point con-
sidered can be calculated using the boundary element based stress
model as proposed in Ref. [1]. Fig. 11 shows the stress fields along
the central vertical plane of y = 0 for point A, B and C defined in
Fig. 9. The components of rxy and ryz are negligibly small in com-
parison with the others and are omitted in this figure. It is observed
that the normal stress concentrations mostly occur at the high-
lands of the surface roughness, below which the orthogonal shear
alternates its direction. These roughness highlands are exactly
where the micro-pits were found in the experiments of Section 2.
With the history of the stress state of a certain material point,
its fatigue life is assessed using a multi-axial fatigue criterion [1–
3]. As the material points of the contact body pass through the con-
tact zone, they experience different loading histories because of
the different local surface roughness geometries and the sliding ac-
tion (if any) which changes the transient match of the local rough-
ness heights of the mating surfaces. In order to include these
variations, the fatigue analysis is performed covering a sufficiently
long roughness profile segment of a length about 4 mm. Fig. 12 dis-
plays the distribution of the micro-pitting crack nucleation fatigue
life Nf for the central vertical plane of y = 0. The most critical spots
(with short lives) are observed to be on the highlands of the surface
roughness. Many of the material points located in the roughness
valleys are predicted to be able to survive more than (10)9 contact
cycles. Comparing the fatigue lives along the depth direction z, it is
concluded that the failure is surface initiated, which is in agree-
ment with the experimental observation.
Focusing on the surface layer of Fig. 12, the probability density
function w(Nf) of the fatigue lives is constructed in Fig. 13e for Test
z [μm]
10.13
-3
-4
-5 8.20
-6
6.26
-7
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
x
Fig. 12. Micro-pitting crack nucleation fatigue life distribution along the central
vertical plane (y = 0) for the entire 4 mm surface roughness segment considered for
Test 5.
#5, with the predicted w(Nf) for the other seven tests specified in
Table 1 displayed in Fig. 13a–d and f–h. For Test #5, it is predicted
that about 29% of the surface material points have the fatigue lives
that are less than 20 million cycles while around 40% of the mate-
rial points have the lives in excess of 100 million cycles. To provide
a measure for micro-pitting failure prediction, the micro-pitting
severity index (MSI) W(Nf0) at the cycle number of Nf0 is defined
as the percentage of the material points having the fatigue lives
less than Nf0, i.e. W(Nf0) is the cumulative probability function of
Z Nf 0
WðN f 0 Þ ¼ wðNf ÞdNf ð2Þ
1
Assuming that the population of these surface layer material
points considered is a representative pool of the entire surface
points, W(Nf0) is equivalent to the micro-pitting area percentage
U, such that the model predictions can be compared directly to
the measurements. It is recognized, however, that different posi-
tions on the roller surface have different surface roughness profiles,
resulting in the distributions that might be different from the one
shown in Fig. 13. In order to include such variation, the bootstrap-
ping method is used to determine the 95% confidence interval for

nϑ = 148 nϑ = 506 nϑ = 657

1
R [μm]

0
-1 (a) [GPa]
0.1
0
-2
-4
-6 (b) -0.925

0
-2
-1.95
-4
(c)
z [μm]

-6
0 -2.975
-2
-4
-6 (d)
-4
0.7
0
0.35
-2
0
-4
-0.35
-6 (e) -0.7
-0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2 -0.2 -0.1 0 0.1 0.2
x [mm]

Fig. 11. Transient stress fields of (b) rx, (c) ry, (d) rz and (e) rxz under the transient roughness contact condition of (a) along the central vertical plane (y = 0) for Test 5.
 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18 17

40

(a) (e)
30
N f = 20 × 106
20

10

0
40
(b) (f)
30

20

10

0
ψ [%]

40

(c) (g)
30

20

10

40
(d) (h)
30

20

10

0
6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
log10 ( N f )

Fig. 13. Predicted probability density distribution of the micro-pitting crack nucleation fatigue life for the material points along Z = R for (a) Test 1, (b) Test 2, (c) Test 3, (d)
Test 4, (e) Test 5, (f) Test 6, (g) Test 7 and (h) Test 8.

W(Nf0). This simple technique constructs subsamples with the 16

same size as that of the original data set (predicted fatigue life pop-
ulation) by drawing with replacement. As a result, some of the 14
subsamples have the data points with relatively short fatigue lives
12
representing the surface area where the asperity peaks are rela-
tively intense and some of the subsamples have the opposite char-
10
Frequency [%]

acteristics. Wi(Nf0) is then calculated for each subsample i (i = 1 to

3000 in this work) and the probability density distribution is built 8
for the data set of Wi(Nf0) such as in Fig. 14 for Test #5 to find its
confidence interval. 6
In Fig. 15, the predicted W(Nf0) (Nf0 = 20 million cycles) together
with its 95% confidence interval are compared with the measured 4
average micro-pitting area percentage U for all the eight tests. For
the case of W = 0 (Tests #1, #2, #6 and #7), the confidence interval 2
cannot be constructed and only W is plotted. It is observed in
0
Fig. 15 that the model predictions are in good agreement with most 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38
of the measurements except for Tests #3 and #8. Comparing the Ψ ( N f 0 ) [%]
operating conditions defined in Table 1 between Tests #3 and #4
only for the normal test stage, it is seen that Test #3 has lower roll- Fig. 14. The probability density distribution of W(Nf0) with Nf0 = 20  106 for Test 5,
ing velocity and higher sliding which would lead to the appearance constructed using bootstrapping method.
of more micro-pits (the model predicts W = 15). However, the mea-
sured average micro-pitting area percentage is only 0.41%, which is is the higher contact pressure in Test #8, which would result in
much lower than that of Test #4 (3%). Similarly, comparing Test #8 more severe micro-pitting. However, the measurement shows
with #4, the only difference for the normal test operating condition smaller amount of micro-pits of 2.7% while the model predicted
18 S. Li, A. Kahraman / International Journal of Fatigue 48 (2013) 9–18
35
Measurement
Measurements
30
Prediction
Predictions
25
20
Ψ [%]
15
10
5
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Test Number
Fig. 15. Comparison of W(Nf0 = 20  106) between the measurements and the
model predictions.
W = 6. The possible cause for these deviations might be that certain
benefits introduced by the run-in process are not captured by the
model. For instance, the high level of the contact pressure or the
low level of the rolling velocity or the combination of the two in
the run-in stage could help the formation of a low-friction tribo-
film on the contacting surfaces and/or raise the local surface hard-
ness through work hardening. Although the effects of the surface
roughness variation during the run-in stage is included in the mod-
eling by using the measured roughness profiles after the run-in
process, the other potential effects of the run-in process are not
considered in the model of Ref. [1].
4. Conclusions
A set of rolling contact fatigue tests with the operating condi-
tions that are representative of those of a gear pair from a turbine
gearbox were conducted to assess the influences of various contact
parameters on micro-pitting failure. The Fractional Factorial tech-
nique was used to construct the test matrix in order to reduce
the number of test runs meanwhile obtaining statistical meaning-
ful measurements. It was found reduced contact pressure, slide-to-
roll ratio and surface roughness amplitude and increased rolling
velocity lead to the reduction of micro-pits. It was also interesting
to see that relatively large contact pressure and relatively small
rolling velocity (in other words severe contact conditions) in the
run-in stage can effectively reduce the amount of micro-pits. The
possible causes include the rounding-off of the asperity peaks,
the formation of low-friction tribo-film, the local hardness increase
due to work hardening and the production of local residual
stresses.
The experiments were simulated using a physics-based micro-
pitting model which incorporates the roughness geometry in the
stress prediction. The micro-pitting severity index was proposed
as a measure of the micro-pitted area percentage. Through the
comparison between the model predictions and the measure-
ments, the model was shown to be able to yield results that are
in good agreements with the experimental observations in terms
of micro-pit crack nucleation site and fatigue life. Certain discrep-
ancies between the predictions and measurements point to certain
areas of potential improvements for the model, including the accu-
rate modeling of the run-in mechanisms.
Acknowledgements
Author thanks Department of Energy (DOE) EERE – Wind &
Water Power Program for sponsoring this research activity.
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