The first part of this article included abrasive wear with two bodies, streaks and scoring, polishing, and hot and cold scuffing. This part will deal with three-body wear, scratches or grooves, and interference wear. Normal, moderate, and excessive wear will be defined, and a descriptive chart will be presented.
The diagnosis and prevention of gear tooth and bearing wear requires the discovery and understanding of the particular mechanism of wear, which in turn indicates the best method of prevention. Because a gearbox is a tribologically dependent mechanism, some understanding of gear and bearing tribology is essential for this process. Tribology is the general term for the study and practice of lubrication, friction and wear. If tribology is neglected or considered insignificant, poor reliability and short life will result.
Non-uniform gear wear changes gear topology and affects the noise performance of a hypoid gear set. The aggregate results under certain vehicle driving conditions could potentially result in unacceptable vehicle noise performance in a short period of time. This paper presents the effects of gear surface parameters on gear wear and the measurement/testing methods used to quantify the flank wear in laboratory tests.
On gear drives running with pitch line velocities below 0.5 m/s so called slow speed wear is often observed. To solve some problems, extensive laboratory test work was started 10 years ago. A total of circ. 300,000 h running time on FZG back-to-back test rigs have been run in this speed range.
Worm gears display unique behavior of surfaces because of the presence of wear phenomena in addition to contact pressure phenomena.
The phenomena of deterioration of surfaces are generally very complex and depend on numerous conditions which include the operating conditions, the type of load applied, the relative speeds of surfaces in contact, the temperature, lubrication, surfaces hardness and roughness, and the compatibility and nature of materials.
In this paper, the potential for geometrical cutting simulations—via penetration calculation to analyze and predict tool wear as well as to prolong tool life—is shown by means of gear finish hobbing. Typical profile angle deviations that occur with increasing tool wear are discussed. Finally, an approach is presented here to attain improved profile accuracy over the whole tool life of the finishing hob.
In this study, limiting values for the load-carrying-capacity of fine-module gears within the module range 0.3–1.0 mm were determined and evaluated by comprehensive, experimental investigations that employed technical, manufacturing and material influence parameters.
In the 1960's and early 1970's, considerable work was done to identify the various modes of damage that ended the lives of rolling element bearings. A simple summary of all the damage modes that could lead to failure is given in Table 1. In bearing applications that have insufficient or improper lubricant, or have contaminants (water, solid particles) or poor sealing, failure, such as excessive wear or vibration or corrosion, may occur, rather than contact fatigue. Usually other components in the overall system besides bearings also suffer. Over the years, builders of transmissions, axles, and gear boxes that comprise such systems have understood the need to improve the operating environment within such units, so that some system life improvements have taken place.
A simple, closed-form procedure is presented for designing minimum-weight spur and helical gearsets. The procedure includes methods for optimizing addendum modification for maximum pitting and wear resistance, bending strength, or scuffing resistance.
This paper describes the investigation of a steel-and-plastic gear transmission and presents a new hypothesis on the governing mechanism in the wear of plastic gears.
Surface coatings or finishing processes are the future technologies for improving the load carrying capacity of case hardened gears. With the help of basic tests, the influence of different coatings and finishing processes on efficiency and resistance to wear, scuffing, micropitting, and macropitting is examined.
Question: I have just become involved with the inspection of gears in a production operation and wonder why the procedure specifies that four involute checks must be made on each side of the tooth of the gear being produced, where one tooth is checked and charted in each quadrant of the gear. Why is this done? These particular gears are checked in the pre-shaved, finish-shaved, and the after-heat-treat condition, so a lot of profile checking must be done.
Point-surface-origin (PSO) macropitting occurs at sites of geometric stress concentration (GSC) such as discontinuities in the gear tooth profile caused by micropitting, cusps at the intersection of the involute profile and the trochoidal root fillet, and at edges of prior tooth damage, such as tip-to-root interference. When the profile modifications in the form of tip relief, root relief, or both, are inadequate to compensate for deflection of the gear mesh, tip-to-root interference occurs. The interference can occur at either end of the path of contact, but the damage is usually more severe near the start-of-active-profile (SAP) of the driving gear.
Several trends in mechanical engineering are leading to greater surface stress on components and thus to unacceptable wear. These trends include greater stresses due to increased power densities; the need to maintain high precision of components throughout their service life; and the environmental imperative to reduce use of lubricants and additives.
In this study, wear behavior of plasma and pulse plasma nitrided gears, made from 42CrMo4 steel, was evaluated under a lubricated sliding and pitting regime.
In this article we will characterize the nitride layers that are generated by different nitriding processes and compare their respective wear characteristics.
Quality gear manufacturing depends on controlled tolerances and geometry. As a result, ferritic nitrocarburizing has become the heat treat process of choice for many gear manufacturers. The primary reasons for this are: 1. The process is performed at low temperatures, i.e. less than critical. 2. the quench methods increase fatigue strength by up to 125% without distorting. Ferritic nitrocarburizing is used in place of carburizing with conventional and induction hardening. 3. It establishes gradient base hardnesses, i.e. eliminates eggshell on TiN, TiAIN, CrC, etc. In addition, the process can also be applied to hobs, broaches, drills, and other cutting tools.
Gear tooth wear and micropitting are very difficult phenomena to predict analytically. The failure mode of micropitting is closely correlated to the lambda ratio. Micropitting can be the limiting design parameter for long-term durability. Also, the failure mode of micropitting can progress to wear or macropitting, and then go on to manifest more severe failure modes, such as bending. The results of a gearbox test and manufacturing process development program will be presented to evaluate super-finishing and its impact on micropitting.
The following article is concerned with the analysis of the wear-reducing effect of PVD-coatings in gearings. Standardized test methods are used, which under near-real conditions enable statements to be made about the different forms of damage and wear (micropitting, macropitting, scuffing).
Durability is the most important criterion used to define the quality of a gear. The freezing of metals has been acknowledged for almost thirty years as an effective method for increasing durability, or "wear life," and decreasing residual stress in tool steels. The recent field of deep cryogenics (below -300 degrees F) has brought us high temperature superconductors, the superconducting super collider, cryo-biology, and magnotehydrodynamic drive systems. It has also brought many additional durability benefits to metals.
The purpose of gear inspection is to: Assure required accuracy and quality, Lower overall cost of manufacture by controlling rejects and scrap, Control machines and machining practices and maintain produced accuracy as machines and tools wear, Determine hear treat distortions to make necessary corrections.
Physical Vapor Deposited (PVD) coatings such as TiN (Titanium nitride) have been a boon for cutting tool manufacturers. They reduce wear and, therefore, extend tool life, which in turn reduces production costs. But PVD coatings are expensive, and when they fail, they cost both time and money, and they causes of the failure are not always readily apparent.
If someone were to tell you that he had a gear material that was stronger per pound than aluminum, as wear-resistant as steel, easier to machine than free-machining steel and capable of producing gears domestically for 20% less than those now cut from foreign made forgings, would you consider that material to be "high tech"? Probably. Well, throw out all the pre-conceived notions that you may have had about "high tech" materials. The high-performance material they didn't teach you about in school is austempered ductile iron (ADI).
When designing hardened and ground spur gears to operate with minimum noise, what are the parameters to be considered? should tip and/or root relief be applied to both wheel and pinion or only to one member? When pinions are enlarged and he wheel reduced, should tip relief be applied? What are the effects on strength, wear and noise? For given ratios with enlarged pinions and reduced wheels, how can the gear set sized be checked or adjusted to ensure that the best combination has been achieved?
Three years ago, coated gears seemed to be the perfect solution for the Micro Marine Corporation. The early designs for the gear drive of their MicroCAT human-powered boat used a combination of thin-film dry gear coatings with lubrication and wear-resistance properties. These coatings simplified their design, provided corrosion resistance, made the gear drive environmentally safe and eliminated the need for gear drive lubrication and maintenance. It was a success story in the making.
Because of the better thermal conductivity of CBN abrasives compared to that of conventional aluminum oxide wheels, CBN grinding process, which induces residual compressive stresses into the component, and possibly improves the subsequent stress behavior. This thesis is the subject of much discussion. In particular, recent Japanese publications claim great advantages for the process with regard to an increased component load capacity, but do not provide further details regarding the technology, test procedures or components investigated. This situation needs clarification, and for the this reason the effect of the CBN grinding material on the wear behavior and tooth face load capacity of continuously generated ground gears was further investigated.
Surface measurement of any metal gear tooth contact surface will indicate some degree of peaks and valleys. When gears are placed in mesh, irregular contact surfaces are brought together in the typical combination of rolling and sliding motion. The surface peaks, or asperities, of one tooth randomly contact the asperities of the mating tooth. Under the right conditions, the asperities form momentary welds that are broken off as the gear tooth action continues. Increased friction and higher temperatures, plus wear debris introduced into the system are the result of this action.
Aurstempered irons and steels offer the design engineer alternatives to conventional material/process combinations. Depending on the material and the application, austempering may provide the producers of gear and shafts with the following benefits: ease of manufacturing, increased bending and/or contact fatigue strength, better wear resistance or enhanced dampening characteristics resulting in lower noise. Austempered materials have been used to improve the performance of gears and shafts in many applications in a wide range of industries.
The hob is a perfect example of how a little manufacturing ingenuity can make a reliable, highly productive cutting tool. It's an engineering specimen that creates higher cutting speeds, better wear resistance and increases rigidity. The cutting tool alone, however, can't take all the credit for its resourcefulness. Advanced coating technology from companies like Sulzer, Oerlikon Balzers, Ionbond, Seco Tools and Cemecon helps improve cutting tools by reducing overall costs, increasing tool life and maintaining the highest levels of productivity. The following is a quick recap of new technologies and the latest information in the coating market.
When we have problems with gearset failure, a common diagnosis is misalignment. What exactly is that and how do we prevent it? The second most common "killer" of good gear sets is misalignment (dirt, or abrasive wear, is first). Gear teeth simply won't carry the load if they don't touch, and the portion that does touch has to carry an overload to make up for the missing contact area.
Carbon steels have primarily been used to manufacture aerospace gears due to the steels' mechanical characteristics. An alloyed low carbon steel is easily case-hardened to obtain a hard wear surface while maintaining the ductile core characteristics. The microstructure achieved will accept the heavy loading, shocks, and elevated temperatures that gears typically experience in applications. The carbon steel machinability allows for general machining practices to be employed when producing aerospace gears versus the more advanced metal removal processes required by stainless and nickel-based alloys.
The lifetime of worm gears is usually delimited by the bronze-cast worm wheels. The following presents some optimized cast bronzes, which lead to a doubling of wear resistance.
A very important parameter when designing a gear pair is the maximum surface contact stress that exists between two gear teeth in mesh, as it affects surface fatigue (namely, pitting and wear) along with gear mesh losses. A lot of attention has been targeted to the determination of the maximum contact stress between gear teeth in mesh, resulting in many "different" formulas. Moreover, each of those formulas is applicable to a particular class of gears (e.g., hypoid, worm, spiroid, spiral bevel, or cylindrical - spur and helical). More recently, FEM (the finite element method) has been introduced to evaluate the contact stress between gear teeth. Presented below is a single methodology for evaluating the maximum contact stress that exists between gear teeth in mesh. The approach is independent of the gear tooth geometry (involute or cycloid) and valid for any gear type (i.e., hypoid, worm, spiroid, bevel and cylindrical).
In recent years, the demands for load capacity and fatigue life of gears constantly increased while weight and volume had to be reduced. To achieve those aims, most of today's gear wheels are heat treated so tooth surfaces will have high wear resistance. As a consequence of heat treatment, distortion unavoidably occurs. With the high geometrical accuracy and quality required for gears, a hard machining process is needed that generates favorable properties on the tooth surfaces and the near-surface material with high reliability.
The performance of metal surfaces can be dramatically enhanced by the thermal process of rapid surface melting and re-solidification (RMRS). When the surface of a metal part (for instance, a gear) is melted and re-solidified in less than one thousandth of a second, the resulting changes in the material can lead to: Increased wear and corrosion resistance, Improved surface finish and appearance, Enhanced surface uniformity and purity, and Sealing of surface cracks and pores.
This article discusses the potential effects observed for different antiwear and EP chemistry on the micropitting of cylindrical gears.
As much as we live, breathe, and sleep gears, there aren't too many of us who actually wear gears.
Induction hardening is a heat treating technique that can be used to selectively harden portions of a gear, such as the flanks, roots and tips of teeth, providing improved hardness, wear resistance, and contact fatigue strength without affecting the metallurgy of the core and other parts of the component that don’t require change. This article provides an overview of the process and special considerations for heat treating gears. Part I covers gear materials, desired microsctructure, coil design and tooth-by-tooth induction hardening.
This paper will present data from both laboratory and field testing demonstrating that superfinished components exhibit lower friction, operating temperature, wear and/ or higher horsepower, all of which translate directly into increased fuel economy.
Often, the required hardness qualities of parts manufactured from steel can only be obtained through suitable heat treatment. In transmission manufacturing, the case hardening process is commonly used to produce parts with a hard and wear-resistant surface and an adequate toughness in the core. A tremendous potential for rationalization, which is only partially used, becomes available if the treatment time of the case hardening process is reduced. Low pressure carburizing (LPC) offers a reduction of treatment time in comparison to conventional gas carburizing because of the high carbon mass flow inherent to the process (Ref. 1).
Engineering design requires many different types of gears and splines. Although these components are rather expensive, subject to direct wear, and difficult to replace, transmissions with gears and splines are required for two very simple reasons: 1) Motors have an unfavorable (disadvantageous) relation of torque to number of revolutions. 2)Power is usually required to be transmitted along a shaft.
The large gears found in mining, steel, construction, off-road, marine and energy applications—massive and robust in nature—need to tackle the greatest production demands. This, in turn, means that a special emphasis must be put on the heat treating methods used to increase the wear resistance and strength properties of gears this size.
"It's not so much the rocks in the road that wear you down as the bit of gravel in your shoe," says the old maxim. Little annoyances over which we seem to have no control are the ones that take their greatest toll and raise our frustration level to the highest point. I feel fortunate to be the editor of a magazine, so I at least have some means to vent my frustration.
After shaping or hobbing, the tooth flanks must be either chamfered or duburred. Here it is paramount that the secondary burr produced will not be formed into the flank, but to the face of the gear, because during hardening, the secondary burr will straighten up and, due to its extreme hardness, will lead to excessive tool wear.
Micropitting, pitting and wear are typical gear failure modes that can occur on the flanks of slowly operated and highly stressed internal gears. However, the calculation methods for the flank load-carrying capacity have mainly been established on the basis of experimental investigations of external gears. This paper describes the design and functionality of the newly developed test rigs for internal gears and shows basic results of the theoretical studies. It furthermore presents basic examples of experimental test results.
Almost all machines or mechanical systems contain precision contact elements such as bearings, cams, rears, shafts, splines and rollers. These components have two important common requirements: first, they must possess sufficient mechanical properties, such as, high hardness, fatigue strength and wear resistance to maximize their performance and life; second, they must be finished to close dimensional tolerances to minimize noise, vibration and fatigue loading.
In conventional gear grinders, grinding wheels with Alundum grains and a hardness of about 2000 HV have been used for finishing steel gears with hardnesses up to about 1000HV. In this case, the accuracy of the gears ground is greatly affected by wear of the grinding wheel because the difference in hardness is comparatively small when the gears are fully hardened.
Eliminating noise, weight and wear proves valuable in 2012.
Gears are currently run at high speed and under high load. It is a significant problem to develop lubricants and gears with high load-carrying capacity against scoring. The particles of molybdenum disulfide have been considered to increase the scoring resistance of the gears. The wear characteristics and the scoring resistance of the gears lubricated with MoS2 paste and MoS2 powder have been investigated. (1) However, there are few investigations on the performance of the gears coated with MoS2 film with respect to scoring.