Mechanical power loss in gears is generated through sliding and rolling of the contact resulting in frictional work and elastic hysteresis generation of heat. This action is both a parasitic loss of energy from the drivetrain and a source of engineering costs to control system temperature to avoid heat-related failures of the gearbox components. Therefore, from both a cost and durability standpoint it is of great interest to minimize the frictional losses at the gear tooth contact interface.
In the wind power industry, the reliability of powertrain components plays a major role. Especially in multi-megawatt offshore applications, an unplanned replacement of drivetrain
components can lead to extremely high costs. Hence, the expectation of wind farm operators is to forecast the system reliability. Under the leadership of the VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), the standardization paper 23904 "Reliability Assessment for Wind Turbines" was published in October 2019.
In many gear transmissions, tooth load on one flank is significantly higher and is applied for longer periods of time than on the opposite one; an asymmetric tooth shape should reflect this functional difference. The advantages of these gears allow us to improve the performance of the primary drive tooth flanks at the expense of the opposite coast flanks, which are unloaded or lightly loaded during a relatively short work period by drive flank contact and bending stress reduction. This article is about the microgeometry optimization of the spur asymmetric gears’ tooth flank profile based on the tooth bending and contact deflections.