Frictional Study of a High-Speed Helical Gear Pair Using Computational and Experimental Thermo-Elastic Analyses

The paper is concerned with frictional study of a high-speed lubricated helical gear pair. The objectives were numerical evaluations of temperature and stress fields of the gear pair and the analysis of their frictional interaction in terms of the coefficient of friction. The problem was also investigated experimentally by temperature measurements at several points of a tooth. We developed an algorithm of numerical modeling based on an iterative scheme generating a sequence of approximate solutions to the temperature and stress fields till attainment of convergence of the numerically obtained and measured temperatures. Since the coefficient of friction significantly affected the frictional heat flux and thereby the temperature fields, it was used as a calibration parameter of the numerical model. Its magnitude was updated from an initial value until the one the process reached convergence with. The outcomes of the study include the temperature and stress fields, the magnitude of the coefficient of friction, and the frictional heat flux distribution.