Actual Tooth Contact Analysis of Straight Bevel Gears

Theoretically, spherical involutes are used as one of the base topographies for straight bevel gears. Actual bevel gears, however, have deviations from their intended topographies due to manufacturing errors, heat treatment deviations, and finishing processes. Measuring the physical parts with coordinate measuring machines (CMMs), this study proposes a new approach to capture such deviations. The measured deviations from spherical involute are expressed in form of a third-order two-dimensional (2D) polynomial function and added to the base topography to duplicate the geometry of the actual part; tooth thickness deviation is also accounted for and corrected through changing the theoretical tooth thickness. The resultant surfaces are then used to construct ease-off and surface of roll angle topographies and to perform tooth contact analysis (TCA) and calculate motion transmission error (TE). At the end a sample straight bevel gear set is measured and utilizing the proposed approach its predicted TCA is compared to the experimental TCA obtained from roll tester. The results show very good correlation between the predicted and actual TCA of the parts. Utilizing the proposed methodology, the other bevel gear base profile geometries (such as octoids) can also be analyzed. In the proposed approach, the difference between other base geometries and spherical involutes can be treated as deviations from spherical involutes and can be taken into account to perform TCA.