Effects of Shaft Misalignment on the Stresses Distribution on teeth of Spur Gears

Abstract

Shaft misalignment is a common problem in most rotating machines. It leads to generate vibration and extra dynamic loading on power transmitting elements, such as gears. Furthermore, it leads to irregular distribution of applied loading on the faces of teeth of mating gears by being concentrated on one side of tooth face. The work presented in this paper focuses on studying the effects of shaft misalignment on stresses distribution on transmitting gear tooth. This is important for gear designers and for those who work in gear maintenance, especially to avoid fracture that is expected to initiate and propagate at the locations of stress concentration. A Finite Element (FE) package (ANSYS) was utilised to conduct this study, where, . 3D elements of two mating gears were modeled aiming to examine the resultant stresses under modified misalignment conditions.. In order to minimize the computational time, only one tooth of each gear was considered for simulation. The influence of the inclination angle of the shafts that the gears were attached was assessed. in particular, . Different FE analyses were carried out where the inclination angle varied from 0.0° to 2° in 0.5° step. The obtained results reveal that stresses concentration increases with the increase of the angle of inclination. . As a result, the possibility of the fracture of the gear increases in the root with increasing the misalignment angle