BIDIMENSIONAL FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF SPUR GEAR: STUDY OF THE MESH STIFFNESS AND STRESS AT THE LEVEL OF THE TOOTH FOOT

The purpose of this work is to determine the spur gear mesh stiffness and the stress state at the level of the tooth foot. This mesh stiffness is derived from the calculation of the normal tooth displacements: local displacement where the load is applied, tooth bending displacement and body displacement [ 15]. The contribution of this work consists in, basing on previous works, developing optimal finite elements model in time calculation and results precision. This model permits the calculation of time varying mesh stiffness and the evaluation of stress state at the tooth foot. For these reasons a specific Fortran program was developed. It permit firstly, to obtain the gear geometric parameters (base radii, outside diameter,...) and to generate the data base of the finite, element meshing of a tooth or a gear. This program is interfaced with the COSMOS/M finite element software to predict the stress and strain state and calculate the mesh stiffness of a gear system. It is noted that the mesh stiffness is periodic and its period is equal to the mesh period.