Design and simulation of meshing of new type of worm-gear drive with localized contacts

Abstract

The design and simulation of meshing of a single enveloping worm-gear drive with modified surfaces is presented. Generally worm-gear is generated by the hob which is identical, to the worm. This process guarantees the conjugation between the worm and the gear but results in a line contact at every instant which is very sensitive to misalignment. The localization of bearing contact is necessary to reduce the sensitivity of the worm-gear drive to misalignment. Practically this localization is achieved by application of an oversized worm type hob to cut the worm-gear. The oversized hob approach is very practical and effective to localize bearing contact but can not provide the conjugation between the worm and the modified worm-gear. This work proposes an analytical procedure to make the worm surface conjugate to the worm-gear which is cut by the oversized hob. The developed computer program allows the investigation of the influence of misalignment on the shift of the bearing contact and the determination of the transmission errors, the contact ratio and the principle curvatures. The developed approach has been applied for ZK type of single-enveloping worm-gear drives and the developed theory is illustrated with a numerical example.