Prediction model for surface generation mechanism and roughness in face gear grinding

Owing to the complexity of the movement and contact relationships between grinding wheel and face gear, the previous surface prediction models for cylindrical, flat, and internal grinding are not able to reveal the surface generation mechanism in face gear generating grinding. In this work, according to the contact conditions between face gear and grinding wheel, grinding width and contact arc length were calculated. Based on the mapping relationship between face gear and wheel grain derived from theory of gearing, generation mechanism of face gear was revealed based on material removal of one step, single path, and entire surface of face gear. From this study, it is concluded that (1) swing angle increment of grinding wheel affects the grinding overlapping width and is the most significant factor affecting the tooth surface roughness. (2) The axial profile of grinding wheel geometry is the basic reason of uneven tooth surface topography. After optimizing the swing angle increment in different regions of face gear, an overall uniform morphology can be obtained efficiently. Experimental results show reasonable consistency with numerical simulations that validate the proposed model. This work provided a novel prediction model for surface generation mechanism and roughness for face gear grinding and can be utilized to optimize the process parameters to obtain higher tooth surface integrity.