Optimizing involute gear design for maximum bending strength and equivalent pitting resistance

Standard involute gear designs dominate high-power transmission applications because they combine sufficient bending strength with high pitting resistance, while retaining an adequate contact ratio. In this paper, a non-standard, optimal alternative involute gear design has been presented, which has the same pitting resistance as the standard involute gears but exhibits maximum resistance to bending. The optimization procedure is based on the complex algorithm, where the root stress, as calculated through tabulated boundary element analysis values, is the objective function and the active constraints include all of the kinematical, manufacturing and geometrical conditions, which must be satisfied by the optimal design, including the pitting resistance. The results indicate that optimal designs can achieve up to 8.5 per cent reduction of the fillet stress. Two-dimensional photoelasticity was used to verify the optimization results.