Influence of tooth errors and misalignments on tooth contact in spiral bevel gears

The method for computer aided tooth contact analysis in mismatched spiral bevel gears is applied for the investigation of the influence of misalignments of the mating members and tooth errors on mesh performances. By using the corresponding computer program the influence of pinion's offset and pinion's adjustment error along the pinion and gear axis, angular position error of the pinion axis and tooth spacing error on the shape and position of path of contact and potential contact lines under load, on separations along the potential contact lines, on angular displacements of the driven gear member from the theoretically exact position based on the ratio of the numbers of teeth, and on the variation of the angular velocity ratio through a mesh cycle have been determined. The results obtained show that the position errors of the mating members worsen the conjugation of the contacting tooth surfaces, and considerably increase the angular displacements of the gear member and the velocity ratio variation through the whole mesh cycle, that considerably worsens the mesh performances. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.