Transmission and load analysis for a crowned helical gear pair with twist-free tooth flanks generated by an external gear honing machine

In the high speed rotational gearbox, the tooth surfaces of gears are usually crowned with twist-free tooth flanks to reduce the vibration and noise of the gear systems due to the transmission error and load variation. In this paper, a method for longitudinal crowning tooth flank of work gear surfaces is proposed by setting a crossed angle between the honing cutter and work gear axes as a linear function of work gear's traverse feed and a variable pressure angle (VPA) honing cutter is also used for free twist of the crowned tooth flank in the external honing process. Besides, the transmission and load characteristics of the gear pairs using a crowned pinion with twist-free tooth flanks are need to understand. Therefore, 3-D models of the meshing gear pairs with twisted and twist-free tooth flanks are constructed and analyzed by using KISSsoft software. Three numerical examples are presented to illustrate and verify the merits of the proposed gear honing methodology as well as shed light on the transmission and load characteristics of the gear pairs with twist-free tooth flanks.