Investigation into the temperature field and thermal deformation of a spiral bevel gear pair at different rotational speeds

In the gear transmission process, inevitably, the relative sliding of the meshing surface generates heat which leads to the deformation of gear. Severe thermal deformation may reduce gear meshing clearance and cause failure of transmission, so it is necessary to further study the thermal deformation of gear. The main purpose of this paper is to compare the steady temperature field, flash temperature and thermal deformation of a spiral bevel gear pair at different speeds. This paper completed the thermal analysis and thermal deformation calculation via using a 3D finite element model of a spiral bevel gear pair. Firstly, the coupled thermo-elastic finite element model had been developed to obtain friction heat generation of spiral bevel gear. Then the friction heat flux was applied to investigate the steady state temperature field of single tooth model and the steady temperature was set as the initial field to predict the flash temperature of the meshing surface at different speeds. Finally, in order to obtain the thermal deformation of single tooth model at different rotational speeds, the static analysis was carried out by setting the steady-state temperature field as the boundary condition. The results show that the steady temperature, flash temperature and thermal deformation of the driving gear and driven gear increase with the rise of speed. These values of the driving gear are always greater than that of the driven gear and also grow faster with the increase of the speed. In detail, the deformation of driving gear and driven gear in 5000rpm rises to the 3.95 times and 3.70 times than that in 1000rpm respectively.