Properties of Honed Gears During Lifetime

Abstract Properties of tooth flanks such as roughness, surface topography, residual stresses, material structure and hardness influence the lifetime of a gear running under load. These properties have been generated by the gear's finishing process, but they do not remain constant when the gear comes into mesh. This paper describes the alterations of the tooth flanks' properties with the example of hardened gears that were finished by gear honing with electroplated tools. The results enlarge the knowledge of fatigue mechanisms that lead to failures of gears when high loads persist over a long running time.