Challenges

Assem­bled com­po­nents typ­i­cal­ly have com­plex inter­ac­tions with one anoth­er. Con­tact points can vary dur­ing oper­a­tional cycles due to part move­ment. This means that the loca­tions of peak strains can be hard to pre­dict, and they are often not sta­tion­ary. The move­ment of parts can also make it imprac­ti­cal to main­tain elec­tri­cal con­nec­tions with gauges. Even when they are sta­tion­ary and easy to locate, the high­est strains can be con­cen­trat­ed in very small areas or have high gra­di­ents. Peak val­ues may be lost to the aver­ag­ing effect pro­duced by gauges.

Solution

Vic-3D pro­vid­ed a means for mak­ing strain mea­sure­ments across the entire pro­file of the gear tooth. Because it pro­vides full-field mea­sure­ments, it was not nec­es­sary to choose a par­tic­u­lar point at which mea­sure­ments would be made. This allowed the peak strains to be clear­ly visu­al­ized and accu­rate­ly mea­sured at var­i­ous stages of the oper­a­tional cycle. Vic-3D also mea­sured dis­place­ment in three dimen­sions. This fea­ture allowed our cus­tomer to rec­og­nize and quan­ti­fy twist­ing of the gear tooth under load.