Investigation of the Effect of Geometry Characteristics on Bending Stress of Asymmetric Helical Gears by Using Finite Elements Analysis

Asymmetric helical gears have been under investigation for more than two decades due to their inherent ability to handle greater bending loads than their spur counterparts of comparable size (i.e., the number of teeth and module). For this type of gear, only one side of each gear tooth in a geared mechanism is usually loaded (driving/driven side), whereas the other remains mostly unloaded (coast side). Due to the asymmetry of the tooth, a nonlinear model is used. For that reason, a numerical design procedure is introduced involving the geometrical and structural modelling of conjugate helical gear sets. This is accomplished with the tool of Finite Element Analysis (FEA) which is presented to the scientific literature. The basic geometry is initially generated in 2D and thereafter converted to a 3D shape using Boolean operations. The rigid body which is necessary for FEA software is produced from Computer Aided Design (CAD) software (SolidWorks). This paper is focused on the effect analysis of different geometry characteristics on bending loads. The effects on bending stress play a significant role in gear design wherein its magnitude is controlled by the nominal bending stress and the stress concentration due to the geometrical shape of the teeth. The analysis of this effect of the different geometrical characteristics in the load is presented in detail. Moreover, a comparison of the stresses that are developed between pairs with asymmetrical helical teeth by keeping one geometric parameter constant and modifying the values of the other two parameters is presented.