Mesh characteristic analysis and dynamic simulation of spur gear pair considering corner contact and tooth broken fault

Theoretically, the contact of a spur gear pair occurs on the line of action (LOA), but the corner contact may happen due to the tooth deformation, especially when there is a tooth broken fault. In this paper, based on the tooth contact analysis, the initial gaps considering tooth broken fault are accurately calculated. Meanwhile, the initial gaps are brought into the loaded tooth contact analysis program and yield the time-varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) and non-load transmission error (NLTE). By comparing with the finite element (FE) method, the meshing state of the gear pair considering various tooth broken heights is presented. The result shows that it is inaccurate to regard the mesh stiffness value as zero when the missing tooth profile should have contact since serious corner contact phenomenon will occur in this state. Moreover, by comparing the simulated dynamic response with the experimental results, this paper finds that the simulation result considering the corner contact effect is closer to the experimental result. This study can provide a more accurate model for the diagnosis of gear tooth broken faults.