Single-Gear-Tooth Bending Fatigue of HDPE reinforced with short natural fiber

Fatigue of short‐natural‐fiber‐reinforced high‐density polyethylene: Stochastic modeling of single‐gear‐tooth bending

“…Before being used, the fibers spend 24 h at 80°C in a drying oven before being grounded to 20–60 mesh size. The mass proportions are 40% fibers, 57% HDPE, and 3% MAPE, in accordance with previous studies 3,4,9 . HDPE and MAPE are blended on heated rollers.…”

“…The first step in the development of a new material is the testing of its basic mechanical properties. The composite proposed in this study has tension, 7 bending, 7 cyclic creep, 8 and fatigue bending 3,9 properties comparable to those of technical plastics. To get industries to use new materials, research is often focused on developing off‐the‐shelf components such as gears.…”

“…Fatigue tests were run on the custom‐designed test bench shown schematically in Figure 3A. This bench previously used to estimate the fatigue life gear teeth 3 . Work by Bravo et al 10 shows that the main failure mode of rotating gear made from the same composite is root fatigue.…”

“…In the interest of limiting the environmental impact of plastics, composite materials containing up to 40% bio‐sourced fibers have been in development for nearly four decades 1 . The expected advantages of these novel materials include increased biodegradability, decreased reliance on petroleum, 2 costs that are lower than those of the currently most used plastics, 2–5 and oil‐less running condition 6 . The first step in the development of a new material is the testing of its basic mechanical properties.…”

“…In previous work, 3 high‐density polyethylene (HDPE) reinforced with short natural fiber was evaluated in terms of the fatigue life and the mode of damage using a test bench designed to monitor the high‐cycle bending‐fatigue characteristics of gear teeth. Fatigue versus the number of cycles was modeled using S‐N curves, damage indices, and a linearized Weibull distribution.…”