Optimum Gear Tooth Geometry for Minimum Fillet Stress Using BEM and Experimental Verification With Photoelasticity

This paper introduces the concept of nondimensional gear teeth to be used in gear stress minimization problems. The proposed method of modeling reduces the computational time significantly when compared to other existing methods by essentially reducing the total number of design variables. Instead of modeling the loaded gear tooth and running BEA to calculate the maximum root stress at every iterative step of the optimization procedure, the stress is calculated by interpolation of tabulated values, which were calculated previously by applying the BEM on nondimensional models corresponding to different combinations of the design parameters. The complex algorithm is used for the optimization and the root stresses of the optimum gears are compared with the stresses of the standard gears for the same transmitted torque. Reduction in stress up to 36.5% can be achieved in this way. This reduction in stress has been confirmed experimentally with two-dimensional photoelasticity.