Gear Tooth-Forming Mechanism and Experimental Research of a Spiral Bevel Gear Rolling Process Using Local Induction Heating

The gear tooth near-net rolling process is a novel technique to enhance the tooth strength of spiral bevel gears. To study the gear tooth-forming mechanism, high-temperature rheological experiments of the material 20CrMnTiH were conducted using the Gleeble 1500D thermosimulation machine, and numerical simulations of the spiral bevel gear rolling forming process based on local induction heating were performed with the use of DEFORM-3D. According to the numerical and rolling experimental results, it is feasible to produce spiral bevel gears using the rolling process with local induction heating. In order to solve the uneven material flow of the gear tooth during the tests, the material compensation coefficient k for gear forming was proposed and the shape of the gear blank was optimized. The simulation results show that the effective height of the tooth heel-end and toe-end in the optimized design increases by about 1 mm.