A virtual tool for wear simulation of plastic gear pairs

Abstract

Currently plastic gears are widely used in industry, and not only for lightly loaded applications like household appliances, tools, and toys, but also in the more demanding areas of machinery in automotive applications. However there is a need to investigate important properties such as load capacity, endurance, cost, life, stiffness and wear. Tooth wear is one of the major failure modes in plastic gears just like with steel gears. This paper focuses on the simulation of wear for standard and non-standard gears using an analytical approach. A numerical model for wear prediction of gear pairs is developed. A wear model based on Archard's equation is employed to predict wear depth. The variation of the contact load generated by the cumulative tooth profile wear is simulated and examined. A MATLAB-based virtual tool is developed to analyze wear behavior of standard and non-standard spur gears depending on various gear parameters. In this paper, this virtual tool is introduced with numerical examples.