Influence of the manufacturing method on the running behavior of beveloid gears

Beveloid gears, also known as conical involute gears, gain more and more importance in industrial practice. They are based on cylindrical gears, but have a variable profile shift along their tooth width. For some time, beveloid gears have been applied to marine transmissions (Winkler 2002; Zhu et al. in Chin J Mech Eng 25: 328-337, 2012), but in the last years they have been used increasingly in the automotive industry (Borner et al. in Gear Technol 6: 28-35, 2005; Alxneit 2010). A crucial step of the manufacturing process is the grinding process that is necessary to achieve high load carrying capacity and low noise vibration harshness (NVH). During the grinding process the micro-geometry of the tooth flanks can be modified in order to increase the gear quality. For the generation grinding process of beveloids, two types of machine kinematics and two tool concepts are known. The different machine kinematics and tool concepts may lead to unintentional changes in micro-geometry of the flanks which has an impact on load carrying capacity and NVH qualities of the gear. Up to now, no research has been made to quantify the influence of the machine kinematics and the tool concept on load carrying capacity and NVH. Therefore, these influences are analyzed in this work by simulating the gear manufacturing with the help of the two known machine kinematics as well as the two known tool concepts and by meshing the simulated gears in an FE-based tooth contact analysis (TCA). The results of the TCA are parameters regarding the running behavior which are analyzed and compared for the four aforementioned manufacturing concepts.