Tooth contact analysis of a curvilinear gear set with modified pinion tooth geometry

Abstract

This article investigated the contact behaviours of a modified curvilinear gear set for parallel-axis transmission, which exhibits a pre-designed parabolic transmission error (TE) and localized bearing contact. The proposed gear set is composed of a modified pinion with curvilinear teeth and an involute gear with curvilinear teeth. Tooth contact analysis enabled the authors to explore the influences of assembly errors and design parameters on TEs and contact ellipses of this gear set. It is observed that TEs were continuous and the contact ellipses were localized in the middle of the tooth flanks, even under assembly errors. Finite-element contact analysis was performed to study stress distributions under different design parameters. In addition, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the contact characteristics of the modified curvilinear gear set.