Effect of Tooth Surface Roughness on Wear of Spur Gears

Abstract

Since gears transmit motion by meshing teeth, it is hard to avoid problems which wear and damage to the tooth surface. Because Tooth surface wear is difficult to predict, the approach to the wear problem still often relies on empirical rules and symptomatic measures. If the undermining by wear can be predicted by mathematical formulas, it may allow engineers to solve wear issues in model-based development, or to consider wear resistance from the design state. Therefore, the development of wear prediction formulas seemed like a very valuable goal, so the authors decided to work on it. In this paper, as a step for the final goal, the gear driving test was conducted using multiple gears with different tooth surface roughness. Then to detect changes in tooth profile, the tooth profile error was measured, and wear depth was calculated. Moreover, surface roughness on teeth was measured, and the relationship between surface roughness and wear depth was investigated.