Analysis of the dynamic contact between rotating spur gears by finite element and multi-body dynamics techniques

Abstract A numerical method is presented for the dynamic contact analysis of spur gears rotating with very high angular speeds. For each gear an elastic tooth of distributed mass is connected to a rigid disc with kinematic constraints, and finite element formulations are used for the equations of motion of the teeth. The velocity and acceleration as well as the position of the contact point sliding on the mating gear teeth are precisely computed by simultaneously using the motions of a pair of rotating tooth surfaces. The equations of motion subjected to the kinematic constraint and contact condition are solved by enforcing the velocity and acceleration constraints as well as the displacement constraint. In the numerical simulation the importance of the mass effect of gear teeth is demonstrated, and it is shown that the solution is obtained even if gears repeat contact and separation.