A novel magnetorheological gear profile finishing with high shape accuracy

Abstract The need of fine finishing of gears with high shape accuracy increases in various industrial, military and scientific instruments applications for enhancing the working performance, power transmission capability, service life, reliability as well as decreasing noise and vibrations at high speed. The surface asperities, dimensional inaccuracy, rough surface and shape inaccuracy of a gear tooth profile occur because of the high speed of material removal mechanism which leads to undesirable effect such as noise and vibration in the gearbox. Therefore, utilizing the conventional tool for finishing of gears at high material removal rates may increase inaccuracy in gear teeth profile shape due to the transverse grinding lines, burns, fine cracks, uneven stress, and thermal distortion. This paper reports on a novel design of a magnetorheological gear profile finishing (MRGPF) tool and its performance analysis to finish the gear teeth profile with more precisely and accurately. The MRGPF tool is made likely similar to the gear grinding profile wheel tool. To analyze the uniform finishing at the gear tooth profile, the magnetostatic finite element analysis (FEA) is performed to predict the uniform magnetic flux density at the proposed tool surface using Maxwell Ansoft. On the basis of the result obtained of magnetic flux density distribution on its finishing surface, the MRGPF tool is designed and fabricated. Further, the experiments are performed to examine the finishing performance of the newly designed tool on the EN-24 steel spur gear teeth profile. The results attest the significant improvement in finishing of gear teeth profile surface with high shape accuracy (DIN standard). This may result in improvement in scuffing performance, reducing noise and vibrations at high speed, reducing wear rate on gear teeth profile and also provides lower friction and temperature during its functional operation.