Life Prediction of One Way Clutch for Case Hardened Steel Under Contact Fatigue with Elastic–Plastic Loading Using Continuum Damage Mechanics

One Way Clutch (OWC) is a machinery component widely used in mechanical industries for transmitting a large amount of torque in one direction while running freely in the reverse. Load reversal in OWC results in highly stressed contact regions and damage leading to fatigue wear initiated from subsurface microcracks. A linear elastic–plastic material model is utilized to capture the effects of microplasticity for case hardening steel in conjunction with continuum damage mechanics. The damage evolution material parameters for case hardening steel are derived using a torsion fatigue curve generated by empirical relationships. A 2D representative volume element (RVE) is considered to predict fatigue lives using damage coupled finite element analysis. The microstructure randomness of the material volume is taken into account by Voronoi tessellation. Fatigue lives and their dispersions are observed to follow the Weibull distribution. The simulation results of this study show a good correlation with experimental results. The influence of residual stress distribution and case hardening depth on fatigue lives is also studied.