A new mesh stiffness model for modified spur gears with coupling tooth and body flexibility effects

Abstract

Mesh stiffness calculation is critically important for gear dynamic analysis, and many mesh stiffness models have been developed for its convenience and efficiency. However, for a long time, how to properly consider the influence of gear body flexibility and tooth profile error during modeling process has been a challenging problem. The existing mesh stiffness models may either ignore the coupling flexibility of the adjacent teeth or the influence of tooth profile error, which may result in a large calculation error. In order to solve this problem, a new mesh stiffness model is proposed in this paper, in which both the gear body coupling flexibility and the influence of tooth profile error have been considered. The proposed model is compared with the existing mesh stiffness models and validated by the finite element method (FEM).