Gear transmission is an important mechanical transmission mode. The continuous revitalization of machinery manufacturing industry has driven the rapid development of gear industry. There are many kinds of gears, which are widely used in aerospace, automobile, railway, ship, engineering machinery and many other fields. In order to meet the transmission requirements of different mechanical equipment, many different types of gear products are designed and manufactured. In many gear products, straight bevel gear and spiral bevel gear are the more common types of bevel gear. The pitch bevel tooth line of straight bevel gear is a straight line. The number of teeth involved in meshing is relatively small, which is easy to lead to impact and vibration, and has the disadvantages of unstable transmission, high noise and so on.
The teeth of spiral bevel gear have the same size and opposite spiral angle, which makes the pitch line of its tooth surface present a curve shape, and avoids the phenomenon of sudden entry and sudden disengagement of the teeth. In the process of meshing transmission, the tooth surface of spiral bevel gear does not enter the contact at the same time, but enters the contact from one end and gradually moves to the other end to disengage the contact. The vibration and noise of spiral bevel gear in the process of high-speed operation will be significantly reduced, and the bearing capacity is large. The minimum number of pinion teeth of spiral bevel gear pair is less than that of straight bevel gear, which can obtain larger transmission ratio and relatively compact gear transmission structure.
The working performance, vibration, noise and service life of spiral bevel gear drive directly affect the performance level of the whole mechanical equipment. With the improvement of the requirements of modern industrial products such as construction machinery, transportation and aerospace equipment for the quality of gear transmission and the increasingly fierce competition in the international market, the development trend of gear transmission is mainly reflected in high-speed and heavy load. In order to improve the design and manufacturing level of spiral bevel gear, the meshing transmission characteristics of spiral bevel gear must be further studied. Therefore, improving the design and manufacturing level of spiral bevel gear has important theoretical value and engineering significance for enhancing the working performance of mechanical products.
China has become a big country in gear manufacturing in the world, but it is not a powerful country in gear manufacturing. It is an important task for China to improve the design and manufacturing level of gear manufacturing industry, especially complex curved surface gears, and strive to catch up with and surpass the advanced level of the world as soon as possible. Gear research has been listed as a key research direction of China’s equipment manufacturing industry in the 12th Five Year Plan, which has important strategic significance. High speed and heavy load are the main working conditions of spiral bevel gears. Its working environment is very bad, which is easy to lead to failure, and the failure consequences are often more serious.
Modern industry urgently requires spiral bevel gears to have excellent performance such as low vibration and noise and high reliability in high-speed and heavy-duty working environment. It is of great significance to improve the quality and service life of our country’s spiral machine tools, such as the core competitiveness of aviation and aerospace engineering, and to improve the machining efficiency and service life of our country’s spiral machine tools. With the rapid development of computer technology, virtual machining technology and finite element method have become an important way to analyze the meshing characteristics of spiral bevel gears.