Impact of Misalignments on Root Stresses of Hypoid Gear Sets

The hypoid gears are a subtype of bevel gears. Hypoid gears are similar in appearance to spiral bevel gears. They differ from spiral-bevel gears in that the axis of the pinion is offset from the axis of the gear. On observation the hypoid gear seems to be similar in appearance to the helical bevel gears. The main difference being that the planes of the input and the output gears are different . This allows for more efficient intermeshing of the pinion and driven gear. Since the contact of the teeth is gradual, the hypoid gear is silent in operation as compared to the spur gears.These gears are usually used in industrial and automotive application and hence the material used is a metal like stainless steel. A major application of hypoid gears is in car differentials where the axes of engine and crown wheel are in different planes.In this thesis, the impact of misalignments on root stresses of hypoid gear sets is investigated theoretically with FEA. An experimental set-up designed to allow operation of a hypoid gear pair under loaded quasi-static conditions with various types of tightly controlled misalignments is introduced. These experimental data is collected from journal paper. Structural analysis is done to verify the strength of the hypoid gear for alignment and misalignment.Software for modeling is Pro/Engineer and for analysis is Cosmos