EFFECT OF WEB ARRANGEMENT ON THIN-RIM GEAR TOOTH CONTACT STRESS

Thin-rim gears are often used in applications where light weight and compact design are demanded.Since the gear rim is more rigid in the area of the gear web, this influences the load as well as the contact stress distribution along the tooth face width.Conventional standard procedures for gear design assume uniform rigidity along the face width and therefore are not fully applicable to the thinrim gears tooth contact stress calculation.The objective of this paper is to evaluate effect of web arrangement on a thin-rim gear tooth contact stresses using advanced engineering tools for a numeric analysis.Three-dimensional parametric finite element model of thin-rim gear engaged with a solid gear is created.The gear pair contact position is chosen to load the thin-rim gear (the wheel) at the highest point of single tooth contact assuming small sliding and dry frictionless contact.Commercial finite element package Abaqus/Standard is used to determine contact stresses assuming small displacement hypothesis.The material is considered homogenous and isotropic with a linear elastic behavior.Obtained tooth contact stress contour lines as well as the maximum tooth contact stress values for various thin-rim gear web arrangements are presented.