Accelerated Life Test and Analysis of Track Drive Unit for an Excavator

주행 구동 유니트의 가속 수명 시험 및 분석

For the reliability evaluation of the track drive unit(TDU), firstly, we analyzed the major failure modes through FMEA(failure mode & effects analysis), FTA(failure tree analysis), and 2-stage QFD(quality function deployment), and then quantitatively determined the priority order of test items. The Minitab analysis was also performed for prediction of life distribution and parameters of TDU by use of field failure data collected from 430 excavators for two years. In addition, we converted the fluctuation load in field conditions into the equivalent load, and for evaluation of the accelerated lift by the cumulative fatigues, the equivalent load is again divided into the fluctuation load by reference of test time. And then, by use of the test method in this paper, the acceleration factor(AF) of needle bearing inside planetary gear which is the most weakly designed part of TDU is achieved as 5.3. This paper presents the quantitative selection method of test items for reliability evaluation, the determination method of the accelerated life test time, and the method of non-failure test time based on a few of samples. And, we proved the propriety of the proposed methods by experiments using a TDU for a 30 ton excavator.