Reliability analysis of gear nonlinear random system under nonstationary excitation

A gear vibration model involving tooth backlash and time-varying stiffness is investigated here, which is exposed to nonstationary excitation. The investigation is explored by the time domain method, and the reliability analysis is based on the first passage problem of the displacement amplitude. As to the multi-dimensional problem, the dimensional decomposition method is used to simplify the calculation of moments, and then the moments is used to approximate the PDF of the limit state function. The method here proposed is an efficient approach to solve the gear vibration reliability problem.