Modified geometry of spur gear drives for compensation of shaft deflections

One of the main problems when standard spur gears are in mesh is the appearance of edge contact on the gear tooth surfaces caused by misalignments. Those misalignments are caused partially by deflections of gear supporting shafts. As a result of an edge contact, a non-favorable condition of the bearing contact occurs, yielding high level of contact stresses. An intensive research and many practical solutions have been directed to modify the gear tooth surfaces in order to avoid edge contact. An innovative procedure is proposed here for: (1) determination of errors of alignment caused by shaft deflections, (2) compensation of predicted shaft deflections during generation of spur gears, and (3), obtaining a favorable function of transmission errors for the design load. A finite element model of a spur gear drive that comprises pinion and gear supporting shafts is used for the determination of errors of alignment along a cycle of meshing. Compensation of misalignments caused by shaft deflections in gear generation is then accomplished by modification of pinion tooth surfaces whereas the gear tooth surfaces are kept unmodified. Additional modifications of pinion tooth surfaces may be required for obtaining a favorable function of transmission errors. The effect of several misalignment compensations in the reduction of contact stresses has been investigated. Postprocessing of load intensity functions and loaded transmission errors is included. The developed approach is illustrated with numerical examples.The authors express their deep gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (MINECO) for the financial support of research projects Refs. DPI2010-20388-C02-01 (financed jointly by FEDER), DPI2013- 47702-C2-1, and DPI2013-47702-C2-2