Title: Increasing spur gear durability: two-material spur gear

Authors: A.S.S.A. Masoud, M. Qasim

Addresses: Mechanical Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 3030, Irbid, Jordan. ' Mechanical Engineering Department, Jordan University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 3030, Irbid, Jordan

Abstract: A new design method to improve durability of spur gears made of low tensile strength material is utilised. In this method, the gear is made of two materials, where most of the gear body is made of low tensile strength material (like gray cast iron or aluminium), and only teeth fillets are made of high tensile strength material (like steel). The method shows promising results; all maximum stresses carried by the gear body |weaker material| and the maximum tooth tip deflection are significantly reduced. A computer code using the boundary element method is written to find gear stresses. Computations carried out by the present code have been verified by comparison with COSMOS/M (Version 1.75) package computation. To simulate two materials body, two pieces made of cast aluminium with circular steel inserts are fabricated. The experimental tests show that failure takes place in the aluminium region.

Keywords: spur gear life; spur gear strength; spur gear durability; two-material spur gears; surface fatigue strength; bending fatigue; tooth tip deflection; boundary element method; BEM; gear stresses; simulation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCAT.2005.007483

International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, 2005 Vol.24 No.3, pp.171 - 179

Published online: 25 Jul 2005 *

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