Impact of Tooth Indexing Errors on Dynamic Factors of Spur Gears: Experiments and Model Simulations

This paper investigates the influences of tooth indexing errors on dynamic factors of spur gears. An experimental study is performed using root strain measurements to (i) establish baseline dynamic behavior of gears having negligible indexing errors and (ii) characterize changes caused by tightly controlled intentional indexing errors to this baseline dynamic behavior. For this, test gears having different forms of indexing errors are paired with an instrumented gear having negligible indexing error. Dynamic root strains of teeth in the neighborhood of teeth with indexing error are measured. A dynamic gear load distribution model is employed to simulate these experiments. Both measurements and predictions indicate clearly that the baseline dynamic response, dominated by well-defined resonance peaks, is altered significantly by transient vibrations induced by indexing errors, in the process increasing dynamic factors significantly in comparison to the case of negligible indexing error.