Gear mesh stiffness and dynamics: Influence of tooth pair structural stiffness asymmetry

There are certainly a lot of different gear mesh stiffness models in the literature, nonetheless, it is not possible to find comprehensive and in-depth gear parametric studies that sweep the gear geometrical domain. To do so, it is required to have a fast and accurate gear mesh stiffness model, which is precisely one of the main developments of this work. By taking advantage of this new model, a parametric study on the influence of tooth pair structural stiffness asymmetry is conducted. This investigation evaluates how the referred stiffness asymmetry affects the gear mesh stiffness, dynamic displacements and load distribution by performing an extensive number of simulations that cover the entire selected gear geometry spectrum — two randomly generated populations of gears, one for spur and another for helical, are tested with and without the tooth pair structural stiffness asymmetry. It is concluded that tooth pair structural stiffness asymmetry cannot be neglected since it can lead to significant modifications on the frequency content of the gear mesh stiffness signal as well as the dynamic behavior of the geared system.