Particle action behavior on the tooth surface of straight cylindrical gears by spindle finishing

Abstract

The objective of this study is to explore the mechanism of action at the contact interface between gears and particles in spindle barrel finishing, using the Discrete Element Method (DEM) for simulation. The motion of the particles in the vicinity of the gear and the contact particles on the tooth surface is first described. Then the effects of gear embedment depth, gear and roller speed on relative particle motion velocity and tooth contact force are investigated. Finally, the simulation results are verified by experiments. The results show that the action of spindle barrel finishing on the gear tooth face is cyclical in nature. Contact force on the upper and lower tooth surfaces of the gear is not uniform, and the contact force on the upper tooth surface is 1.5 to 1.8 times that on the lower tooth surface. Increasing the gear embedment depth mainly affects the contact force between the particles and the tooth surface. A 75% increase in embedment depth leads to a 76% rise in tooth surface contact force. Similarly, increasing the gear and drum speed mainly affects the relative movement speed between particles and the tooth surface. A 150% increase in gear and drum speed results in a 148% increase in the relative movement speed of particles in contact with the tooth surface. Increasing the embedment depth of the gear can reduce the processing variability of the gear tooth surface along the axial direction. After increasing the embedment depth from 80 mm to 140 mm, the roughness of the upper and lower tooth surfaces along the axial direction decreases from 17% and 36% to 62% and 55%, respectively. However, the processing variability along the tooth profile direction does not change significantly by changing the speed and embedment depth.

Keywords

• gear
• barrel finishing
• discrete element simulation
• particle flow field
• stress testing