Nonrelative sliding of spiral bevel gear mechanism based on active design of meshing line

In this paper, an active design method of meshing line for a spiral bevel gear mechanism with nonrelative sliding is presented. First, the general meshing line equations for a nonrelative sliding transmission mechanism between two orthogonal axes are proposed based on the active design parameters. Then, parametric equations for contact curves on the drive and driven spiral bevel gears are deduced by coordinate transformation of the meshing line equations. Further to this, parametric equations for the tooth surface of each bevel gear are derived according to the conical spiral motion of a generatrix circle along the calculated contact curves. Finally, a set of numerical examples is presented based on two types of motion equation of the meshing points. Material prototypes are fabricated and experimentally tested to validate the kinematic performance of the functionally designed spiral bevel gear set.