Aiming at the lifespan bottlenecks of the bionic flapping-wing aircraft drive mechanisms caused by hinge wear, a dynamic reliability assessment method was proposed considering clearance hinges. Based on the working principle of the flapping-wing aircraft drive mechanisms, the failure modes of the mechanisms were analyzed, and wear and motion asymmetry were established as the key failure modes. A non-uniform wear dynamics model was developed by integrating the Hertz contact force model and the Archard wear theory. The wear profile was reconstructed by drawing spline curves through discrete control points, enabling dynamic update simulation for multiple cycles of wear. Building upon the active learning method combining Kriging and Monte Carlo simulation(AK-MCS) and considering competitive failure modes, improved-AKMCS was used to quantify the competitive failure mechanism between hinge wear and rocker motion asymmetry. The results indicate that wear failure dominates the first 65 000 operation cycles of the mechanisms; until 68 000 cycles, the failure due to motion asymmetry intensifies, and the overall reliability drops from 0.9989 to 0.0165. Sensitivity analysis confirms that the elastic modulus, wear coefficient, and initial hinge clearance have significant correlations with reliability.
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