FINITE ELEMENTS IN ANALYSIS A N D DESIGN

ELSEVIER

Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 27 (1997) 345-357

A method for calculating static transmission errors of plastic spur gears using FEM evaluation
M i n g - H a u n g Tsai, Ying-Chien Tsai*
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Sun Yat-Sen University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan 80424, ROC

Abstract

There are many ways to calculate the static transmission errors of steel gears, but none is developed for plastic gears. Since the Young's modulus of the plastic material is lower than that of steel by two orders, the effects of large tooth deflection on the static transmission errors of plastic gears become significant. A multi-tooth contact analysis using finite element method for calculating the static transmission errors of plastic spur gears is established to compare with the existing method for ,;teel spur gears. According to the comparison results, a modification of the existing method is proposed for plastic spur gears and verified by the same finite element contact analysis. 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

Keywords: Plastic gear; Static transmission error; Multi-tooth contact analysis

I. Introduction

Plastic gears have the merits of low noise, light weight, and self-lubrication. They are widely used in automotive and domestic appliances, business and printing machinery, computer peripherals, textile machinery, and so on. Most of the methods for analysis and design of plastic gears are derived from those of steel gears with some modifications due to the characteristics of low modulus of elasticity and temperature-sensitivity of plastic material. In 1972, Gafitanu [-1] presented the influence of the high deformability of plastics on the loading capacity of polyamide gears. Ten years later, Yelle and Burns [2] found that the real contact ratios of plastic gear pairs increase due to large tooth deflection under loads. Meanwhile, there were several papers studying the relationship between the running temperature and fatigue strength or wear of plastic gears [-3, 4]. In Japan, Tsukamoto conducted a series of experimental studies on plastic gears for power transmission [5, 61.

*Corresponding au~thor. Tel. : + 886 7 525 4252; fax: + 886 7 525 4299; e-mail: yctsai@mail.nsysu.edu.tw. 0168-874X/97/$17.00 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S0 1 6 8 - 8 7 4 X ( 9 7 ) 0 0 0 2 2 - X

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The static transmission error is strongly related to the kinematic accuracy of gear trains, dynamic load of gear tooth, and gear noise. It is defined as the difference between the theoretical position of the output gear, with perfect geometric accuracy and rigid drive, and the actual output position at a low enough speed [7]. The factors leading to the static transmission errors are gear manufacturing errors, assembly errors, tooth profile modifications, and tooth deflections due to loading. In the late 1970s, Remmers [8] and Mark [9] considered the static transmission errors as gear mesh excitations and investigated the influence of tooth spacing errors, tooth profile errors, and tooth deflections on them. Later Markov and Gushchin [10] studied the effects of the tooth edge contacts due to pitch errors on the instantaneous transmission ratio variance. Litvin et al. [11] explained an analysis method for the determination of kinematic precision of gear trains by meshing theory. Some examples of dealing with the problems of assembly errors were presented. In 1986, Houser and Tavakoli [12] developed a procedure for computing the static transmission errors and optimized tooth profile modifications to minimize these errors. The same procedure was applied by Sundaresan et al. [13] to design spur gears that have minimum transmission errors and are insensitive to manufacturing variance. Recently, Sugimoto et al. [14] measured the tooth surfaces of hypoid gears by a new measuring apparatus and used the loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) software which was developed by Gleason Works to study the effects of tooth-bearing length and the alignment error on the transmission error. Fong and Tsay [15] also proposed a tooth contact analysis technique based on Litvin's method to calculate the kinematic errors of spiral bevel gears. Those previous studies have presented many different methods to analyze the static transmission errors of steel gears, but none pertaining to plastic gears. In this paper, a representative method among them will be evaluated by the finite element analysis in order to develop a suitable method for calculating the static transmission errors of plastic spur gears.

2. Existing methods
As mentioned previously, there are many methods developed for calculating the transmission errors of steel gears. They could be roughly divided into two categories, one pays more attention to the effects of tooth deflection under loads, and the other is based on kinematics theory. Because the low modulus of elasticity of plastic material will cause larger tooth deflection than that of steel, this paper chooses one method from the former category as the base of developing a suitable method for plastic spur gears. In 1986, Houser and Tavakoli [12] proposed the following equations to solve for the static transmission errors and load sharing between two simultaneously contacting pairs of teeth of steel spur gears.
Q joW j o -Jr-Etj = Ej, olw) -~- Etj = Elpj ~- Eso, 1,
W O + W) = Wn. (1)

The subscript j denotes the contact position on the path of contact, and the superscript 0 or 1 represents the leading or lagging pair of teeth, respectively. In addition, W, is the total transmitted normal load, and Wj is the load shared by each simultaneously contacting pair of teeth. Etj is the static transmission error, Epj is the combined profile modification of a pair of meshing teeth, and Eso, 1 is the combined spacing error between the leading and lagging pairs of teeth. Qj is the total compliance of gear tooth involving the deflections due to bending, shearing, foundation

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rotating and surfhce contacting. In Houser's study, the non-uniform contilever beam model developed by Cornell 1-16] was used to compute the deflection due to the first three effects, and the contact compliance was approximated from the modified Palmgren's formula: 1.3'7
Oh = p0.9h0. 8
~e we Wn

0.1'

Ee = 2 E I E 2 / ( El -~- E2),

(2)

where E1 or E2 is the effective modulus of elasticity of the driving or driven gear, respectively, and be is the effective face width. Assuming the manufacturing errors and the tooth profile modifications are zero, the following results will be obtained from Eq. (1):

J Q) W,, QO +

w j1 _ QOQO + Q) w , ,

E t j - Qj o + Qj 1 w..

_ Oo

(3)

It is shown that the Houser's method assumes the simultaneously contacting pairs of teeth to be the springs connected in parallel to share the load, and the total displacement of this spring system to be the transmission error. It is similar to the model used by Yelle and Burns [-2] for calculating the real contact ratios of plastic gear pairs. However, the influences of the real contact ratios on the static transmission errors are not considered in the Houser's method. In the next section, we evaluate these influences and ver:(fy the way of load sharing for plastic spur gears by finite element analysis.

3. Multi-tooth contact analysis In order to evaluate the application of the Houser's method to plastic spur gears, any assumption of load sharing between the simultaneously contacting pairs of teeth should be avoided. Therefore, the static transmission errors as well as the way of load sharing will be solved as a contacting problem by finite element method in this paper. The C O N T A C T option of the finite element package MARC is used to solve this contacting problem according to the following procedures [-17]: (1) Define the contacting bodies. The rigid bodies can be pure geometric entities, and the deformable bodies are collections of finite elements. t2) Describe the motions of the contacting bodies. The motion of the rigid body is applied by rigid-body motion, but the deformable body can only be moved by fixed displacement or other contacting bodies. (3) Imposes the non-penetration constraints on any boundary node of the contacting bodies. (4) The analyses proceed incrementally. In every increment, the contact nodes are detected if the distances between the nodes and surfaces are below some defined value. Their equilibrium positions as well as the contact forces are found after creating the tying constraints or the imposed displacement on them. If the tensile contact forces are greater than the separation tolerance force, the nodes are released and the new equilibrium positions will be found. In this paper, the analyses include two configurations, steel/plastic gear pairs and plastic/plastic gear pairs. The steel gear is considered as a rigid body, and the plastic gear is a deformable body with the quadrilateral plane strain elements. Both gear models have 4 or 5 teeth to reflect the

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influence of the adjacent teeth of the contacting gear pairs. To begin with the analysis, some positions, where one or two pairs of teeth mesh, are chosen along the path of contact in one base pitch as shown in Fig. 1. Then, the driving gear rotates about its axis with a small angle in every increment, and the driven gear is fixed. The mesh and boundary condition of a steel/plastic gear pair are shown in Fig. 2. The total force obtained from the contact nodes will be the normal load

Highest Point Path of Contact

0f~Tc:tht Cr Lti~ct

Pitch Point

LowestPoinl of Single Tooth

Contact

Fig. 1. Choice of contact positions for analysis.

,//

0 O0 0 0 q O0 O

O0

rigid body rotation

Fig. 2. Finite element mesh and boundary condition.

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transmitted by the contacting pair of teeth, and the total rotation angle of the driving gear multiplied by the radius of the base circle will be the static transmission error. This method is called multi-tooth contact analysis.

4. Comparisons
The results obtained by using the Houser's method and the multi-tooth contact analysis will be compared in this :section. Data of four spur gear pairs used in this comparison are shown in Table 1. They are all assumed error-free. The tooth form is the involute profile with full circular fillet. The profile modification of tip relief is referred to the PGT tooth from system developed by Plastics Gearing Technology, Inc [18] as shown in Fig. 3. Nylon66 is chosen as the material of plastic gears. Its elastic properties are E = 3540 MPa and v = 0.35. In the Houser's method, the tooth compliance due to bending, shearing, and foundation rotating is calculated by using the beam model. It would be slightly different from the one obtained by using the finite element method. In order to prevent those differences affecting the comparisons, the tooth compliance in the Houser's method will be determined using the same finite element model of the multi-tooth contact analysis with a point load applied on different positions of the tooth profile. Fig. 4 shows the dimensionless compliance of tooth number 20, 30, and 50. However, the surface contacting compliance is still approximated from Eq. (2). In addition, the load sharing ratio is defined as

W)
y l j - Wn.

(4)

The comparisons of the static transmission errors and the load-sharing factors obtained by two methods are shown in Fig. 5. The abscissa is the distance from the pitch point to the contact position normalized by the base pitch. Its positive value means the teeth mesh in the approaching

Table 1 Data of gear pairs for analysis Case no. Module (mm) Pressure angle (deg) Addendum (mm) Dedendum (mm) Tooth no. Material Profile modification Normal load per unit Facewidth (N/mm) Contact ratio aDriving/driven gear. 1 2 2 20 2 2.5 30/30 Steel/plastics no 35 1.65 3 4

20/20 a Steel/plastics no 30 1.56

30/50
Plastics/plastics

no
40 1.70

30/30 Plastics/plastics Tip relief 35

1.65

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M.-H. Tsai, Y.-C. Tsai / Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 27 (1997) 345 357 Tip relief

E r r o r c h a r t of m=2, z=30

930i

---

24

22
i i ! ; i

20 r

, 10 20 30 40
E r r o r ( Ixm )

14

I;F
7

Fig. 3. Tooth modification of tip relief and the error chart.

12 11 e~ 8
=

Z=20 Z=30
z=so

...J.++"
rl . ~ . / i "

/ / / ////"

6 4 3 2 1 0
-1

-0.8

-0.6

-0.4

-0.2

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Normalized rotation angle from pitch point Fig. 4. Tooth compliance of point load model using FEM.

zone. In case 1, the results of two methods are very close. Only a few differences occur at positions where the number of contacting pairs are going to change or just changed. However, in case 2 and 3, the large differences are found in the entire zone of geometric single contacting pair. It is because the premature and/or delayed engagement of teeth increases the meshing stiffness, and decreases the transmission error. This explanation could be verified from the load sharing ratios becoming less than 1 in this zone. On the contrary, the results in the zone of two contacting pairs coincide very well. It means that the way of load sharing used in the Houser's method is agreed with that of the multi-tooth contact analysis. In case 4, a similar phenomena are also found for a gear pair with the tooth modification of tip relief.

M.-H. Tsai, Y.-C. Tsai/Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 27 (1997) 345-357
Transmission error ~ m ) 30 40 50 /' 60 ' 70 , 80 0.8 .~ 0.7 0.6 "~'o 0.5 0.4 "~ ,1" // 0.3 0.2 Load sharing ratio 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

351

I"I

\ i ~

..........

~.///

o.1 ~ o .~
-I -0.1 i -0.2 -0.3 z (a) c a s e

, ....

30

40

Transmission error (p.m) 50 60 70 80 ! y,'/

9O 0.8 0.7 . 0.6 : 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 ' 0.1 0 ,

Load sharing ratio 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

0.9 -~

-O.l : -0.2

(b) case 2
Houser's method Multi-tooth contact analysis Fig. 5. C o m p a r i s o n s o f H o u s e r ' s m e t h o d a n d m u l t i - t o o t h c o n t a c t anslysis.

According to the comparison results of these four cases, the following conclusions are obtained: (1) The static transmission errors and the load sharing between the simultaneously contacting pairs of teeth of plastic spur gears can be calculated by the springs model as used in the Houser's method. (2) The static transmission errors and the load sharing are obviously affected by the premature and/or delayed meshing of teeth due to large tooth deflection of plastic gear. Therefore, some modifications of the Houser's method are needed for plastic spur gears.

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Transmission error ~m)
90 I00 110 120 130 140 150 160 170 Load sharing ratio 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

.~ 0.3 0.4

0.9

o.9
o.s 0.7

\'\'X

.~ 0.5 ~
0.6 0.4 ~

0.3 ~ 0.2 ~ 0.1 ~

-0.1 ~

ilill;i;il
Load sharing ratio 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

-0.2 ~

(c) case 3
Transmission 80

error 0tm) 0.9 .~

90 100 1 1 0 120 130 140 150 160

/ / /

eL

0.8

~o N 'k ._

0.7

o.6 .~ o.5 ~.
o

0.4 ~ 0.3 0.2 \\'-....... i 0.1 ~

-0.1 i -0.2 ~:

(d) case 4
. . . . Houser's method Multi-tooth contact analysis Fig. 5. (Continued).

5. Modified Houser's m e t h o d

As mentioned in the conclusions of the previous section, if the Houser's m e t h o d is modified to consider the influence of the premature and/or delayed meshing of teeth, it could be applied to calculate the static transmission errors of plastic spur gears. Therefore, for the gear pair with

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353

contact ratio less than 2, a set of four simultaneous equations instead of only one equation in the zone of geometric: single contacting pair is proposed as
0 Qj w j0 --~Etj
l 1

= Epj
1

0 __

Eso,1 - -

Eep,

Qj w j + Etj -- Up j,
2 2 2 Qj W j + Etj = Epj + E s 1 , 2 - Es2ep, o W j + W) + W 2 = Wn, (5)

where the definitions of the variables are the same as those in Eq. (1), except that the superscript 1 represents the original contacting pair, and the superscript 0 or 2 denotes the adjacent pair of teeth before or behind the original contacting pair, respectively. E s e p is the separation distance of the adjacent pair of teeth. It is defined as the angle, which is required for the driving tooth coming into contact with the driven tooth, multiplied by the radius of the base circle. The detailed calculation procedures for Es,p are shown in the appendix. In addition, the tooth compliance of the new contacting pair should be computed for new loading position. For the analysis in the zone of geometric two contacting pairs or analysis of the gear pair with contact ratio greater than 2, it only suffices to add one or two more equations to the Houser's equations as shown in Eq. (5) and solve them simultaneously. However, if the actual number of the contacting pairs is less than the value assumed in the equations set, the solved loads of the non-contacting pairs would be negative. Then, the corresponding equations should be removed from the equations set, and the remaining equations are solved for a new set of solutions. The analysis results of the case 3 in last section obtained by this modified method are compared with

Transmission error 01m)

Load sharing ratio

813, 90 100 110 120 130 140 150 160 ) 0.9

gL

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2

eL

0 -0.1 -0.2

Modified Houser's method Multi-tooth contact analysis Fig. 6. C o m p a r i s o n o f m o d i f i e d H o u s e r ' s m e t h o d a n d m u l t i - t o o t h c o n t a c t analysis.

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those using multi-tooth contact analysis, and shown in Fig. 6. The maximum difference of the transmission errors between these two methods in the zone of geometric single contacting pair is reduced to 6%. The validity of the modified Houser's method is verified.

6. Conclusion
A multi-tooth contact analysis using finite element method has been presented in this paper to calculate the static transmission errors and load sharing of plastic spur gears. The results are compared with those obtained by the existing method for steel spur gears. The following two suggestions have been proposed: (1) The springs model used in the existing method for steel spur gears is suitable for plastic spur gears. (2) Because the tooth deflection of plastic spur gear is larger than that of steel spur gear, the influence of the premature and/or delayed meshing of teeth should be considered for plastic spur gears. Accordingly, a modification of the existing method has been derived for plastic spur gars, and verified by the multi-tooth contact analysis. This modified method can be used to study the minimization of static transmission errors of molded spur gears with parametric tooth profiles.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the National Science Council of Republic of China for the financial support of this study through contract NSC-83-0422-E110-003.

Appendix
Refer to Fig. 7, the separation distances of the pairs of teeth adjacent to the contacting pair are calculated by the following procedures geometrically. For the adjacent pair of teeth before the contacting pair, the position vector of any point on the tooth profile of the driven gear is expressed
as

Pa =

Pay

=/sin

~b2

c o s ~b2 J

- Rp2 - e b 2 t~ sin ~

F Rp2 sinq52 + Rb2~bcos(~ -- ~b2) ,-], LC -- Rp2 c o s (~2 -- Rb2 ~b sin(~ - ~b2)J 2rt where (])2 = -- ~ -- (1 -- X) Z 2 "

(A.1)

The subscript 2 denotes the driven gear. Rb is the radius of the base circle, and Rpis the radius of the pitch circle. In addition, q~is the rotation angle from the pitch point, and ~ is the pressure angle. C is

M.-H. Tsai, Y.-C. Tsai /Finite Elements in Analysis and Design 27 (1997) 345-357

355

Vl

Fig. 7. Separation distances of the pairs of teeth adjacent to the contacting pair.

the center distance of two gear axes. x represents the distance from the pitch point to the contact position normalized by the base pitch, and Z is the tooth number. Assume the tip of the driving tooth will come into contact with the flank on the driven tooth, the ~b of the contact point on the driven tooth can be solved from Pa~ + PaZy= R21, (a.2)

where the subscript 1 represents the driving gear, and Ra is the radius of the a d d e n d u m circle. Then, as shown in Fig. 7, 7~ = t a n - 1 _ _ _ Pax -Pay ' 2n (p~ = (1 - x) ~1 + inv ~ - inv qSal, where C a l = COS 1 Rbx
Ra 1

(A.3)

inv ~ = tan ~ -- ~.

(A.4)

The separation distance of the adjacent pair of teeth before the contacting pair is defined as
Eep =

Rbl(]Ja- -

(~0a)"

(A.5)

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F o r the adjacent pair of teeth b e h i n d the c o n t a c t i n g pair, the angle of the tip of the driven t o o t h defined in Fig. 7 is calculated b y 2re /3 = (1 + x) Z22 + inv ~ - inv q~a2, where a2 = COS-1 Rb2
Ra2 "

(A.6)

A s s u m e the tip of the driven t o o t h is the c o n t a c t point. T h e n ~0 = s i n - 1 Ra2 sin fie

Re '

where Rc = x / C 2 --[-R22 -- 2CRa2 cos fie and 7c = (1 + x) -~--- - inv ~ + inv , L1 w h e r e ~bc = c o s - 1 Rbl Rc
27t

(A.7)

(A.8)

T h e s e p a r a t i o n distance of the a d j a c e n t pair of teeth b e h i n d the c o n t a c t i n g pair is defined as E~p = Rbl(7 e -- q~e). (A.9)

References
[1] M.D. Gafitanu, Contributions to the study of the influence of the number of teeth on the loading capacity of polyamide gears, Rev. Roum. Sci. Technol. Mech. Appl. 17 (2) (1972) 409-424. [2] H. Yelte, D.J. Burns, Calculation of contact ratios for plastic/plastic or plastic/steel spur gears pairs, J. Mech. Des Trans ASME 103 (1981) 528-542. [3] S.S. Yousef, D.J. Burns, Techniques for assessing the running temperature and fatigue strength of themoplastic gears, Mech. Mach. Theory 8 (1973) 175-185. [4] J.H. Chen, F.M. Juarbe, M.A. Hanley, Factors affecting fatigue strength of nylon gears, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 103 (1981) 543-548. [5] N. Tsukamoto, Investigation about the strength of plastic gears (lst. The strength of nylon gears which have counter-crowning), Bull. JSME 22 (173) (1979) 1685-1692. ['6] K. Terashima, N. Tsukamoto, J. Shi, Development of plastic gears for power transmission (Power transmission mechanism of plastic gears), Bull. JSME 27 (231) (1984) 2061-2068. [7] J.D. Smith, The uses and limitations of transmission error, Gear Tech. (1988) 34-39. [8] E.P. Remmers, Gear mesh excitation spectra for arbitrary tooth spacing errors, load and design contact ratio, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 100 (1978) 715-722. [9] M.D. Mark, Analysis of the vibratory excitation of gear systems: basic theory, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 63(5) (1978) 1409-1430. [10] N.N. Markov, V.G. Gushchin, Influence of tooth pitch error on the smoothness of operation of a spur gear transmission, Sov. Eng. Res. 3(1) (1983) 7-10. [11] F.L. Litvin, R.N. Goldrich, J,J. Coy, E.V. Zaretsky, Kinematic precision of gear trains, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 105 (1983) 317-326.

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1-12] M.S. Tavakoli, D.R. Houser, Optimum profile modifications for the minimization of static transmission errors of spur gears, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 108 (1986) 86-95. 1,13] S. Sundaresan, K. Ishii, D.R. Houser, A procedure using manufacturing variance to design gears with minimum transmission error, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 113 (1991) 318-324. 1-14] M. Sugimoto, N. Maruyama, A. Nakayama, N. Hitomi, Effect of tooth contact and gear dimensions on transmission errors of loaded hypoid gears, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 113 (1991) 182-187. 1,15] Z.-H. Fong, C.-B. Tsay, Kinematical optimization of spiral bevel gears, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 114 (1992) 498-506. 1-16] R.W. Cornell, Compliance and stress sensitivity of spur gear tooth, J. Mech. Des. Trans ASME 103 (1981) 447-459. 1,17] MARC Reference Library, vol. A: User Information, MARC Analysis Research Corporation, Palo Alto, CA, 1992. 1,18] C.E. Adams, Plastic Gearing: Selection and Application, Marcel Dekker, New York, 1986.