Reverse design of involute helical gear pairs considering machining errors based on IMAGEWARE and HYPERMESH

Gears inevitably contain errors during the manufacturing and installation process, which can increase the vibration and noise of the gear system. The finite element model with error can accurately solve the variation of vibration and noise and meshing characteristics of such gear systems. This paper develops a combined analytical and simulation method for involute helical gears when machining errors are included. First, the tooth profile accurate point clouds of the involute gear are derived by cutting the tooth blank with the rack and the coordinate transformation function. Subsequently, the gear is reconstructed by the IMAGEWARE and UG. With HYPERMESH's powerful node editing capabilities, sinusoidal profile errors can be assigned to gears. Also, the intersection of the error gear with the tooth blank is used to find the apex, which has an essential effect on noise. Finally, the difference in static transmission errors of gears with and without errors is analyzed by ABAQUS. The results show that gears containing errors increase the peak-to-peak values of transmission errors, i.e., increasing noise. The method proposed in this paper can provide a basis for modeling and analysis of meshing characteristics of special gears that cannot be directly parameterized or gears with various errors.