The evolution of clearances in the joints of mechanisms due to the effect of wear has been already extensively addressed. This work goes a step beyond and studies the impact of clearance increase in the fatigue life of the machine. Moreover, a simplified method based on popular commercial software is proposed to analyze the effect of clearance evolution on the service life of machines, that requires a low effort from the user, thus being a suitable tool for industry. The method is first validated against an example from the literature and, then, it is applied to a real industrial machine. Results show that clearances may have a great impact in the service life of machines and, hence, they must be taken into account when seeking to make predictions at the design stage.

由于磨损的影响，机构关节间隙的演变已经得到广泛解决。这项工作超越了一步，研究了间隙增加对机器疲劳寿命的影响。此外，提出了一种基于流行的商业软件的简化方法来分析间隙演变对机器使用寿命的影响，这需要用户付出很少的努力，因此是一种适合工业使用的工具。首先根据文献中的示例验证该方法，然后将其应用于实际的工业机器。结果表明，间隙可能会对机器的使用寿命产生重大影响，因此，在设计阶段进行预测时必须考虑间隙。