Loaded contact pressure distribution prediction for spiral bevel gear

Contact pressure and load distribution are key indices used in the performance evaluation of spiral bevel gears, and their calculation accuracy and efficiency continue to be the focus of active research. An accurate and efficient numerical approach for predicting the contact pressure and load distribution of a spiral bevel gear is presented based on multi-tooth deformation compatibility. First, an improved discrete tooth surface contact analysis (DTCA) method is developed to obtain the contact characteristics of the gear set under the no-load condition. This method is a geometric approach that avoids numerical instability. A local triangular mesh refinement algorithm is proposed to improve the accuracy and efficiency of the DTCA method. Subsequently, the deformation compatibility relationships of a spiral bevel gear set are derived for single-tooth and multi-tooth meshing. By combining the deformation compatibility relationship and the influence coefficient method, a multi-tooth loaded contact analysis (MLTCA) model of the spiral bevel gear set is established. Moreover, an iterative algorithm based on the conjugate gradient and fast Fourier transform method is proposed to determine the mesh force and contact pressure distribution. Finally, the proposed method is tested using numerical examples to demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency by comparison with finite element simulations and experiment results.