Computerized generation and simulation of meshing of a novel crown gear coupling avoiding edge contact

To avoid the occurrence of the hub tooth tip edge contact with the sleeve tooth root flank and the sleeve tooth tip edge contact with the hub tooth root flank, a novel crown gear coupling composed of a hub with profile crowning, longitude crowning, and tip sphere teeth, and a sleeve with straight internal teeth is presented in this paper. The generating procedure of the hub with profile parabolic modification for the novel crown gear coupling is proposed. And the meshing model with angular misalignment of the novel crown gear coupling is developed. Tooth contact analysis (TCA) based on the theory of gearing and loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) based on finite element method (FEM) are employed to simulate contact path and to calculate contact stress distributions of the novel crown gear coupling. An example crown gear coupling is presented. The effects of profile parabolic modification coefficient and misalignment angle on contact path are investigated both for the conventional and novel crown gear couplings. Also, contact stress distributions are analyzed both for them with the maximum misalignment angle. The performed research proves that an appropriate amount of profile modification for the hub of the crown gear coupling permits the avoidance of edge contact in presence of angular misalignment, and can significantly reduce the maximum contact stress, compared with the conventional one.