Contact fatigue life prediction of PEEK gears based on CTAB-GAN data augmentation

The contact fatigue life of PEEK gears is a critical fundamental data for the design of load-carrying capacity, which is significantly influenced by many factors such as material type, operating temperature, and loading level. Temperature effects must be considered during contact fatigue life prediction of PEEK gears. This article presents a predictive model for contact fatigue life of PEEK gears, utilizing the CTAB-GAN data augmentation. The CTAB-GAN data augmentation model expands the experimental dataset of contact fatigue lives of oil-lubricated PEEK gears. Then, a predictive formula was derived to estimate contact fatigue life of oil-lubricated PEEK gears considering the temperature dependent effect. Results revealed that the predicted fatigue lives of PEEK gears under different loading and temperature conditions based on the enhanced dataset are within a two-fold scatter band. The mean square error of predicted lives reduces by 30% compared to the life formula based on the original experimental data set. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis was conducted on the influence of operating temperature and stress on the fatigue life of PEEK gears.