Why is there so much emphasis on the tooth contact pattern for bevel gears in the assembled condition and not so for cylindrical gears, etc?

Bevel gears must be assembled in a specific way to ensure smooth running and optimum load distribution between gears. While it is certainly true that the "setting" or "laying out" of a pair of bevel gears is more complicated than laying out a pair of spur gears, it is also true that following the correct procedure can make the task much easier. You cannot install bevel gears in the same manner as spur and helical gears and expect them to behave and perform as well; to optimize the performance of any two bevel gears, the gears must be positioned together so that they run smoothly without binding and/or excessive backlash.

An experimental and theoretical analysis of worm gear sets with contact patterns of differing sizes, position and flank type for new approaches to calculation of pitting resistance.

Our experts comment on reverse engineering herringbone gears and contact pattern optimization.

After a period of operation, high-speed turbo gears may exhibit a change in longitudinal tooth contact pattern, reducing full face width contact and thereby increasing risk of tooth distress due to the decreased loaded area of the teeth. But this can be tricky—the phenomenon may or may not occur. Or, in some units the shift is more severe than others, with documented cases in which shifting occurred after as little as 16,000 hours of operation. In other cases, there is no evidence of any change for units in operation for more than 170,000 hours. This condition exists primarily in helical gears. All recorded observations here have been with case-carburized and ground gear sets. This presentation describes phenomena observed in a limited sampling of the countless high-speed gear units in field operation. While the authors found no existing literature describing this behavior, further investigation suggests a possible cause. Left unchecked and without corrective action, this occurrence may result in tooth breakage.

Optimizing the running behavior of bevel and hypoid gears means improving both noise behavior and load carrying capacity. Since load deflections change the relative position of pinion and ring gear, the position of the contact pattern will depend on the torque. Different contact positions require local 3-D flank form optimizations for improving a gear set.

In recent years, gear inspection requirements have changed considerably, but inspection methods have barely kept pace. The gap is especially noticeable in bevel gears, whose geometry has always made testing them a complicated, expensive and time-consuming process. Present roll test methods for determining flank form and quality of gear sets are hardly applicable to bevel gears at all, and the time, expense and sophistication required for coordinate measurement has limited its use to gear development, with only sampling occurring during production.

Service performance and load carrying capacity of bevel gears strongly depend on the size and position of the contact pattern. To provide an optimal contact pattern even under load, the gear design has to consider the relative displacements caused by deflections or thermal expansions expected under service conditions. That means that more or less lengthwise and heightwise crowning has to be applied on the bevel gear teeth.

The most conclusive test of bevel and hypoid gears is their operation under normal running conditions in their final mountings. Testing not only maintains quality and uniformity during manufacture, but also determines if the gears will be satisfactory for their intended applications.

The manufacturing quality of spiral bevel gears has achieved a very high standard. Nevertheless, the understanding of the real stress conditions and the influences. of certain parameters is not satisfactory.