In this article the authors present a loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) method for asymmetric gears that provides an accurate and efficient design tool for analyzing and comparing designs. The presented method is implemented in SMT's MASTA software. The authors also present an example comparative study using this tool for an automotive application.

The design of gear blanks or flanges has traditionally been driven by weight reduction. Recently innovative companies have started to use the gear blank design to tune the system dynamics to reduce gear whine.

This paper demonstrates an application of the tooth interior fatigue fracture (TIFF) analysis method, as implemented in SMT's MASTA software, in which loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) results from a specialized 3-D contact model have been utilized to determine the load boundary conditions for analysis of tooth flank fracture (TFF).