Semi-analytical loaded tooth contact analysis method for spiral bevel gears

Loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) is an important tool for analyzing the meshing of spiral bevel gears. This paper presents a semi-analytical LTCA method, where the analytical formulas are used to calculate the tooth deformation and contact force, with partial coefficients corrected by finite element analysis (FEA) results. Based on Tredgold's Approximation, the tooth is sliced, of which the flank is determined by simulating the manufacturing process. In order to calculated the potential contact curves of a real gear pair, an optimization model is established to find the points more likely to be in contact within the range of contact curves obtained by the help of roll angle surfaces. The compliance of tooth is modeled as a combination of two contributions, where the deformation of cantilever beam under load is used to determine the global deformation, and the local contact deformation is obtained by Hertz line contact assumption. A contact judgement strategy is proposed to detect the contact of the slices at ends of contact curves, and the correction coefficients are introduced in the tooth deformation to consider the coupling effect among slices. In the end, a numerical instance of LTCA under different load torques is provided, which demonstrates the accuracy and efficiency of the presented LTCA method by comparisons with results of FEA. This method can be easily modified to analyze other gear pairs and has the ability to be extended to simulate the gears with local defects or cracks.