Compensation of alignment errors due to shaft deflections in spiral bevel gear drives designed with different types of contact pattern

Abstract

In this paper, a methodology to compensate alignment errors due to shaft deflections for a given design load in spiral bevel gear drives is presented, considering four types of contact pattern, linear and localized in longitudinal, profile and adjusted diagonal directions. Firstly, the machine-tool settings corresponding to a Cyclo-Palloid process are determined to design the mentioned four contact patterns. Secondly, an iterative process for each contact design is required where a finite element analysis provides the alignment errors due to shaft deflections. The results show the efficiency of the proposed methodology to compensate alignment errors from the design of the gear tooth surfaces in the four types of contact pattern, and the larger tolerance in the profile and adjusted diagonal directions designs to variations of the design load. Several numeral examples are presented.