Construction of uncut chip geometry in gear skiving using level contours

In gear skiving, tool-chip contact condition becomes complicated when using multiple radial infeed strategy. We are interested in calculating a precise boundary of the uncut chip geometry to capture its topological variation especially in semi-/finishing-passes. To achieve this, we propose a level contour method to implicitly construct the uncut chip and gear gap geometries with contour curves. By comparing the artificial potential energy defined on the different contours, geometries of uncut chip and gear gap are successfully obtained. In addition, the implicit contour provides an efficient and comprehensive way to express the topology changes of the uncut chip geometry from the I to the U shape. By changing the radial and axial infeed rates, the proposed method is proven can advance the understanding of tool-chip contact area variation with the active contour, which can smoothly present merging, emerging and separation, for the development from single-contact to multiple-contact areas during a single-cut.