Abstract
The presence of surface roughness on the teeth of hardened and ground power transmission gears is an unavoidable consequence of their manufacture. The paper discusses the effect of surface roughness when the elastohydrodynamic lubricant film thickness developed between the gear tooth surfaces is small compared to the heights of the roughness features. The ratio of these quantities, called the Λ value, may be well below unity in typical applications. For such thin film conditions the moving roughness features cause the elastohydrodynamic contact between the gears to be highly transient in nature. Surface roughness features on the working surfaces of the gears move past each other during meshing and these asperity encounters are associated with extreme pressure perturbations, or with film breakdown and isolated asperity boundary lubrication events. The paper reviews approaches used to study this problem and describes a coupled approach to solving the elastic and hydrodynamic equations. This allows numerical solutions to be obtained for these extreme conditions so that transient contact events associated with mixed lubrication can be predicted in a unified numerical solution scheme. Typical results obtained from such an analysis are presented including surface fatigue modelling and contact strain energy calculations.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
