Loaded behaviour of steel/bronze worm gear

Worm gears are widely used in power transmission applications, in which a compact high reduction and a relatively low speed drive is required. This paper presents a numerical model developed to compute the quasi-static load sharing. This method uses the equation of displacement compatibility and the influence coefficient method, which allows a fast and accurate computing. The bending deflections of the gear teeth and worm threads, and the local contact deformations of mating surfaces are included. The bending deflections of the gears are determined with the combination of: only one standard FEM computation and interpolation functions. To calculate the local contact deformations, the Boussinesq theory is used. The model allows to obtain numerous results, such as the load sharing, the contact pressure distribution or the loaded transmission error. The method allows taking into account the environment of the gear meshing, such as the actual shafts, rim, web, bearing locations...