Surface integrity and process parameters optimization in generating grinding of spiral bevel gears

Spiral bevel gear is widely used in aerospace, national defense, military, automotive and other fields. The quality of its tooth surface is directly related to vibration, noise, service life and other key performance of the transmission system, which puts forward extremely stringent requirements on its last grinding process. However, due to the complexity of spiral bevel gear tooth surface and the difficulty of detection, most of the existing technology studies are based on spur gear tooth surface, and these surface integrity studies are not comprehensive and in-depth. In this paper, a theoretical and simulation analysis model for grinding force and grinding heat of spiral bevel gear tooth surface was established, and the influence of process parameters such as grinding wheel speed, grinding wheel feed speed and grinding depth on surface integrity such as gear tooth surface roughness, microscopic morphology, metallographic organization, microhardness and residual stress was comprehensively analyzed. On this basis, the grinding process optimization model of spiral bevel gear was established and verified by experiments. The results show that when the grinding wheel speed increases, the grinding wheel feed speed and grinding depth decrease, the grinding force decreases and the tooth surface deformation caused by grinding heat gradually extends and increases from the gear tooth midline position. When the grinding wheel speed is 10 m/s, the grinding wheel feed speed is 2225 mm/min and the grinding depth is 0.01 mm, the tooth surface integrity indexes are the best. The processed surface roughness is as low as Ra 0.125 μm, the surface microstructure of the slat martensite is dense, uniform and high content, the microhardness is 62.90HRC and the residual compressive stress of the concave and convex surface is − 875 MPa and − 1179.24 MPa, respectively. The error between the established multi-objective grinding process optimization model and the experimental results is 3.50–14.05%. The research results have important theoretical and practical significance for the optimization of grinding process parameters and the improvement of machining surface quality of spiral bevel gear.