Rontu
Rontu
Rontu
(Printed with permission of the copyright holder, the American Gear Manufacturers Association, 1001 N. Fairfax Street, Fifth
Floor, Alexandria, VA 22314-1587. Statements presented in this paper are those of the author(s) and may not represent the
position or opinion of the American Gear Manufacturers Association.)
Management Summary
It is common practice in high-power gear design to apply reliefs to tooth flanks; they are meant to prevent stress
concentration near the tooth edges. Gears with crowning have point contact without load, and when load is applied,
instantaneous contact turns from point into a Hertzian contact ellipse. The contact area grows and changes location as
load increases. To prevent edge contact, the gear designer has to choose suitable reliefs considering contact indentations
as well as relative displacements of gear members.
In the majority of spiral bevel gears, spherical crowning is used. The contact pattern is set to the center of the ac-
tive tooth flank and the extent of the crowning is determined by experience. Feedback from service, as well as from
full-torque bench tests of complete gear drives, has shown that this conventional design practice leads to loaded contact
patterns, which are rarely optimal in location and extent. Oversized reliefs lead to small contact area, increased stresses
and noise, whereas undersized reliefs result in an overly sensitive tooth contact.
Today it is possible to use calculative methods to predict the relative displacements of gears under operating load
and conditions. Displacements and deformations originating from shafts, bearings and housing are considered. Shafts
are modeled based on beam theory. Bearings are modeled as 5-degree-of-freedom supports with non-linear stiffness in
all directions. Housing deformations are determined by FEM analysis and taken into account as translations and rota-
tions of bearing outer rings. The effect of temperature differences, bearing preload and clearances are also incorporated.
With the help of loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA), it is possible to compensate for these displacements and
determine a special initial contact position that will lead to well-centered, full-torque contact utilizing a reasonably large
portion of the available tooth flank area. At the same time, crowning can be scaled to the minimum necessary amount.
This systematic approach leads to minimum tooth stressing, lower noise excitation, increased reliability and/or power
density as compared to conventional contact design method.
A– A
A
dm
Fr
δ 0
ne
h co
δr
pitc
A
b
MD
Figure 4—Deformation of individual element contact. Figure 5—Application point of tooth forces.
External
clearance
df Internal
clearance
Z
X
Y
Figure 7—Examples of internal and external bearing clear-
ances.
Figure 6—Application point used in shaft calculation.
CLEARANCE
REDUCTION
SHRINK FIT
WARM
Figure 8—Clearance reduction due to temperature difference Figure 9—Clearance reduction due to shrink fit (Ref. 3).
(Ref. 3).
CENTRERLINE OF
analysis is repeated several times, with different input. The
MATING GEAR
resulting, optimal tooth geometry might be a compromise be-
tween several different load cases. Figure 17 is an example
of such a situation in an automotive application. With a 50%
load, the contact approaches the toe; and with a 100% load, df
the heel. In this case the crowning and initial contact pattern
location were chosen so that a satisfactory compromise be-
tween different loaded conditions was obtained.
In reality the actual relative position of gears under load ERROR IF
DISTANCE df
NOT
will vary in a certain range—even in cases with single load. CONSIDERED DEFLECTED NEUTRAL AXIS OF SHAFT
Figure 19 (Example 1)—Basic drive line construction and re- Without consideration of relative displacements, the cal-
sults of drive line analysis. culated contact pattern for the drive side would have looked
62 GEARTECHNOLOGY June/July 2011 www.geartechnology.com
Figure 20 (Example 1)—Comparison of actual and calculated
contact patterns. Figure 21—Comparison of measured and calculated shaft
displacements.
Acknowledgements
Great gratitude is expressed to the customers with whose
permission the pictures of the two example cases were pre-
sented in this paper.
References
1. DIN ISO 281Supplement Four. Rolling Bearings/Dynamic Load
Figure 24—Calculated contact pattern without consideration Ratings and Rating Life: Methods for Calculation of the Modified
of relative displacements. Reference Rating Life for Universally Loaded Rolling Bearings,
Berlin, 2003, Deutsches Institut für Normung.
as presented in Figure 24. This illustrates the significance of
2. FAG Bearing Catalog, December, 2008.
drive line analysis in this particular case. 3. SKF Bearing Catalog, January 2004.
4. Linke, H. et al. “The Development of the Program BECAL–an Ef-
Conclusions ficient Tool for Calculating the Stress of Spiral Bevel Gears,” Inter-
In this paper computational analysis procedures for deter- national Conference on Mechanical Transmissions, April 5–9, 2001,
mining relative displacements of spiral bevel gears under load Chongqing, China.
have been presented. The method has been verified by com- 5. Baumann, V. and J. Thomas. “Grundlagen zur Ermittlung der
Zahnflanken and Zahnfussbeanspruchung Bogenverzahnter Keg-
parison with actual test data.
elräder auf der Basis Experimentell Gestützter Näherungsbeziehu-
Significance of the presented factors (e.g., bearing clear- ngen,” Frankfurt: Forschungs–Vereinigung Antriebstechnik, 1995,
ances) greatly varies by application. The described analysis Abschlussbericht (FVA–Heft 429).
method is used to analyze gear drive constructions of differ- 6. Szanti, G. “Method for Designing Silent Running Spiral Bevel
ent designs. Therefore the goal has been to make the analysis Gears Using Loaded Tooth Contact Analysis,” JSME International
process generally applicable, containing as many of the influ- Conference on Motion and Power Transmissions, May13–15, 2009,
encing factors as possible and regardless of their significance. Matshushima Isles Resort, Japan.