Analytical load sharing and mesh stiffness model for spur/helical and internal/external gears - Towards constant mesh stiffness gear design

In previous works the authors presented two load distribution models for gears. One of the models was based on the rigid tooth assumption and the more complex of the two took advantage of influence coefficients obtained from a FEM model to find the load distribution. In this work an analytical model relying on the ISO 6336 maximum teeth stiffness and a parabolic single tooth stiffness per unit of single line length was developed. This load distribution model relies on an original description of the contact line length based on Heaviside functions to find the gear mesh stiffness. The proposed model is of straight forward implementation, very little computational cost and yields promising results. The concept of constant mesh stiffness gear design is also introduced. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.