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The ability to evaluate the bending fatigue behavior of carburized low alloy steels in a laboratory and relate these measurements to performance of high contact ratio helical gears is important to the design and development of transmissions. Typical methods of evaluating bending fatigue performance of carburized gear steels do not directly represent helical planetary gears because they lack the geometric and loading conditions of planetary pinions. The purpose of this study is twofold; 1) development of a lab fatigue test to represent the fatigue performance of planetary pinion gears tested in a dynamometer and 2) evaluation of the influence of alloy content on bending fatigue performance of two steel alloys. The steels under evaluation were modified 8620M and 4615M alloys machined into bend bars with a notch representing a gear root and carburized to a case depth of approximately 0.35 mm (using the same carburizing cycle as the planetary pinion gears).