A New Method for Calculating Meshing Stiffness of Spur Gears Considering Misalignment with Multiple Degrees of Freedom

Due to manufacturing errors and installation errors, spur gears are prone to misalignment and result in decreased meshing stiffness. In this paper, a new method for calculating meshing stiffness of misaligned spur gears is proposed. Firstly, the misalignment with multiple degrees of freedom of the gear pair are defined, and the continuous tangency condition of the misaligned contact surfaces are obtained through tooth contact analysis (TCA). Then, the contact tooth surfaces are discretized on the common tangent plane, and the deformation coefficient matrixes of bending, shearing, Hertzian contact and fillet foundation of the gear are obtained according to the improved influence coefficient method. In addition, the load-deformation equations are obtained based on the relationship between the elastic deformation, clearance and elastic approach of the contact tooth surfaces, and then the meshing stiffness of the gear pair is calculated. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed method is verified by comparing it with that obtained by the finite element method, and the effect of load on meshing stiffness is also analyzed.