Evaluation of Mechanical and Thermal Stresses in Polymer Gear Teeth through Simulation Approach

Abstract:

One way to achieve lightweight and lubricant-free drive train is, among others, to convert conventional steel to polymer composite materials. This paper describes a part of this endeavor by taking a spur gear pair as a study object. One of the steel gear wheel is replaced with three different materials including Victrex PEEK 650G, Victrex PEEK 650CA30 and Luvocom PEEK 1105-8165 while keeping the gear geometry unchanged. Mechanical stresses and thermal properties are two major criteria for material selection at this stage. Therefore carbon fiber filled PEEK (Victrex PEEK 650CA30) and PEEK filled with thermal conductive minerals (Luvocom 1105-8165) are chosen to benchmark each of the criterion. The evaluation is done by modeling the gear mesh and analyzing the contact forces and heat generated in the gear tooth. The results show surface temperature on the tooth flanks, root tensional stress and contact pressure during the tooth mesh. The work suggests a guideline of materials selection. Depending on actual application a compromisation between mechanical and thermal properties often needs to be considered within the tolerance boundary in order to obtain optimized results. This work only deals with material selection. Gear design such as optimization of tooth geometry for polymer gears is out of the scope of this study and will not be discussed.

• Periodical: Applied Mechanics and Materials (Volume 302)
• Pages: 468-473
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMM.302.468
• Online since: February 2013
• Authors: Per Lindholm, Jian Qin
• Keywords: Contact, Finite Element Method (FEM), Friction, Gear, Polymer

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