Loaded Tooth Contact Analysis and Stresses in Spiral Bevel Gears

Abstract

The method for loaded tooth contact analysis is applied for the investigation of the influence of misalignments and tooth errors on load distribution, stresses and transmission errors in mismatched spiral bevel gears. By using the corresponding computer program the influence of pinion’s offset and axial adjustment error, angular position error of the pinion axis and tooth spacing error on tooth contact pressure, tooth root stresses and angular displacement of the driven gear member from the theoretically exact position based on the ratio of the numbers of teeth is investigated. The obtained results have shown that in general, the misalignments in spiral bevel gears worsen the conjugation of contacting tooth surfaces and in extreme cases cause edge contact with high tooth contact pressures. But, some mismatches, as are the axial movement of the pinion apex towards the gear teeth or the tip relief of pinion teeth (in this analysis it is represented by the tooth spacing error) reduce the maximum tooth contact pressure. Also it can be concluded that the misalignments and the tooth spacing errors significantly increase the angular position error of the driven gear from the theoretically exact position based on the numbers of teeth and make the motion graphs unbalanced.