Simulation system of operating performance of hypoid gears

A performance simulation program of hypoid gears that can accept measured form deviation of real tooth flank form is developed and gear dynamic performance such as transmission error, contact pattern under load and no-load, normal load distribution on tooth flank, tooth contact stress, tooth root stress, flash temperature, vibrational excitation for actual production gears can be simulated. In this simulation program, a new method has been proposed to determine the reference surface for the tooth contact analysis of bevel and hypoid gears. The gear reference surface use the theoretical tooth flank coordinate calculated from the machine settings and the pinion reference surface use a virtual conjugate pinion surface. The concept of composite error surface has been introduced by using conjugate reference surface and measured real tooth flank form. The deformation of tooth and rim of hypoid gears calculated by FEA, and the approximation equation for the compliance of cylindrical involute gear tooth is modified to that of hypoid gear tooth. The results of loaded contact pattern calculated by simulation program were also compared with the experimental results and showed good agreement.