An investigation into the impact of grinding residual stress on the meshing stress of spiral bevel gear

Grinding residual stress (GRS) has been understood to have a great impact on the strength of gear fatigue life. However, there are lack of detailed studies on the influences in terms of mechanism and magnitude. To fill this gap, this study proposed a new method based on finite element analysis (FEA) to calculate the overall meshing stress on a gear tooth surface by including both the GRS and elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) film pressure. Applying this method to a spiral bevel gear has resulted in a number of interesting results that GRS produced to reveal its mechanism of action through a full meshing cycle. The acquired understanding would be useful for development of manufacturing processes.