A Helical Gear Meshing Stiffness Model Incorporating Friction Effects and Contact Deformation

The accurate calculation of gear time-varying mesh stiffness is of significant importance for the dynamic modeling of gear systems. Currently, research on calculation methods for helical gear mesh stiffness is relatively limited, with the primary approaches being finite element methods and analytical methods. This paper proposes an optimized helical gear meshing stiffness model. Building upon the slice potential method, this approach comprehensively accounts for the effects of tooth-surface friction and local contact deformation. Results indicate that tooth surface friction causes abrupt changes in meshing stiffness values, while local contact deformation leads to an overall decrease in meshing stiffness values. To validate the application value of the optimized calculation method, the contact line method was replaced with the optimized slice potential energy method for simulating the external sound field of locomotive traction transmission systems. Comparisons with actual measurement data revealed that the sound pressure level data from this study’s meshing stiffness model align more closely with experimental results than those from the contact line method model, with the maximum error decreasing from 5% to 2.2%, effectively enhancing the accuracy of the rapid modeling method.