Compensation of Errors of Alignment Caused by Shaft Deflections in Spiral Bevel Gear Drives

摘要

The effect of errors of alignment on the bearing contact of spiral bevel gear drives has been the subject of research for many years. Generally speaking, gear misalignment causes transmission errors and edge contacts, leading to incremental levels of noise and vibration, and a reduction of the gear drive service life. Apart from assembly and/or manufacturing errors, supporting shafts deflections caused by torque transmission constitute an important but predictable source of misalignments in gear drives. In the paper, a procedure of determination of the relative spatial position of spiral bevel gear supporting shafts during torque transmission will be proposed, in order to predict the relative errors of alignment between spiral bevel gears. The obtained errors of alignment will be employed as initial data in the local synthesis method, for the purpose of compensating them through modification of the pinion surface microgeometry. Finally, a numerical example will illustrate the proposed procedure, as well as the advantages of its consideration in the design of advanced spiral bevel gear drives in order to achieve the best contact pattern and function of transmission errors for nominal torque transmission.