Transient Wear Simulation in Sliding Contacts of Spur Gear Teeth

Abstract

Gear transmission is important in engineering due to its high efficiency in transferring both power and motion. As a surface phenomenon, wear may change the gear geometry, cause a non-uniform gear rate and increase dynamic effects, all of which can lead to reduced efficiency and even severe tooth failure. In numerical predictions of wear, the conventional method, where the contact pressure over the slip distance is integrated, will cause a computation bottle-neck. To obtain an accurate integration of the wear within the small, fast moving contact area, the finite element model needs to be meshed very finely, and the time increments must be sufficiently small to resolve the contact pressure field. As proposed in recent work, the so-called CForce method has the potential for fast wear computation for two-dimensional Hertzian contacts. The CForce method replaces the pressure integration by the contact force and eliminates the need to determine the contact pressure field. In this work, the CForce method was used to predict the wear in spur gears with a focus on the transition of the contact load from one pair of teeth to the next. Predictions of wear for two different torques show that the CForce method can achieve robust results with higher efficiency compared with that of the conventional pressure integration approach.