Dynamical wear prediction along meshing path in mixed lubrication of spiral bevel gears

Abstract

Surfaces of gears under combined rolling and sliding motions may suffer a complicated wear process due to the transient time-varying effect along the meshing path. In this paper, a methodology for predicting the wear of tooth surfaces is developed for the spiral bevel gears. In the wear model, the machined surface roughness, mixed lubrication, friction, flash temperature and the dynamic behavior of gears are all considered. Tooth-Contact-Analysis (TCA) method is used to get the time-varying parameters of meshing points along the meshing path. By simulating real movement process, the material is removed according to the Arrhenius equation. First, the distribution of pressure and film thickness is obtained by solving the mixed EHL model. After that, the flash temperature can be computed by the point heat source integration method with the obtained pressure, film thickness and velocity vector. The material removal is based on surface temperature and sliding distance. The numerical results are compared to the ball-on-disk experiments to demonstrate the reasonableness of the present wear model. And it shows that the angle difference between velocity vectors has strong influences on the wear profile. Furthermore, the mechanism of surface wear evolution is investigated systematically in spiral bevel gears. The difference of the wear track between the pinion and gear surfaces is observed. Besides, in the meshing process of tooth surface, the wear along the meshing path is uneven, which appears to be much greater at the engaging-in and engaging-out areas. There is a position with maximum wear rate in the meshing process, and the position is affected by the load and speed.