Cylindrical gear transmission errors influenced by temperature based on thermal network

Gear transmission errors are influenced by temperature especially in the aerospace field. A model is proposed to investigate the influence of temperature on cylindrical gear transmission errors based on the thermal network (TETN). The gear temperature field distribution model is established based on the thermal network method, and gear thermal deformation can be calculated along the gear meshing line. Regarding the gear single-flank rolling process, the variation of gear transmission errors under temperature is determined. In numerical calculations in MATLAB, the variation of gear transmission errors at 100°C compared to 20°C is –4.20 μm, which decreases almost linearly while the thermal expansion coefficient of the gear material increases. The simulation of the gear transmission errors variation of temperatures using the finite element method (FEM) were carried out in Workbench software under Ansys and the average difference of the TETN model results between calculations and FEM for different temperatures was 0.24 μm. Experiments were carried out on the gear tester in temperatures ranging from 0°C to 100°C, the TETN model results in calculations were compared with the results of the tester, and the average difference was –1.15 μm. The results show that the proposed TETN can be used as an algorithm to determine the variation of gear transmission errors under the influence of temperature.