An Ease-Off Based Method for Loaded Tooth Contact Analysis of Hypoid Gears Having Local and Global Surface Deviations

Manufacturing errors typically cause real (measured) spiral bevel and hypoid gear surfaces to deviate from the theoretical ones globally. Tooth surface wear patterns accumulated through the life span of the gear set are typically local deviations that are aggravated especially in case of edge contact conditions. An accurate and practical methodology based on ease-off topography is proposed in this study to perform loaded tooth contact analysis of spiral bevel and hypoid gears having both types of local and global deviations. It starts with definition of the theoretical pinion and gear tooth surfaces from the machine settings and cutter parameters, and constructs the theoretical ease-off and roll angle surfaces to compute unloaded contact analysis. Manufacturing errors and localized surface wear deviations are considered to update the theoretical ease-off to form a new ease-off surface that is used to perform a loaded tooth contact analysis according to the semi-analytical method proposed earlier. At the end, a numerical example with locally deviated surfaces is analyzed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology as well as quantifying the effect of such deviations on load distribution and the loaded motion transmission error.