The Influence of Tooth Surface Modifications on the Sensitivity of Involute Cylindrical Gears to Manufacturing Errors

Gear drives, like all mechanical devices, are subject to manufacturing errors and defects. Higher levels of precision in manufacturing to increase the quality of the gears are costly, but sometimes required to attain sufficient performance from a gear drive. However, certain intentional microgeometry modifications to the gear tooth surfaces can be used to reduce the sensitivity of the gear drive to manufacturing errors. These changes in tooth surface design can be simple and cheap to implement, and result in a more robust gear drive which is more indifferent to manufacturing errors. In this thesis, the influence on intentional micro-geometry modifications of the gear tooth surfaces on the mechanical performance of gear drives for different levels of manufacturing errors or associated quality numbers will be investigated. The finite element method will be used to determine the extent to which these gear tooth surface modifications could be used to reduce peak contact and bending stresses in the gear tooth, as well as their influence on the gear drive’s function of transmission errors. Results have shown that the application of micro-geometry modifications to the gear tooth surfaces can drastically decrease the sensitivity of peak contact and bending stresses within a gear drive to manufacturing errors, reducing the manufacturing costs and enabling higher levels of transmitted power