Contact stress calculation of undercut spur and helical gear teeth

The presence of undercut at the pinion root may affect the load sharing among couples of spur gear teeth in simultaneous contact, as well as the load distribution along the line of contact of helical gears. This occurs if the outside points of the wheel profile do not find, due to undercut, mating profile to mesh with, which is called vacuum gearing. Under these conditions, the effective contact ratio is reduced, and the critical contact points may be shifted from their locations at non-undercut profiles. In this paper, a non-uniform model of load distribution along the line of contact, obtained from the minimum elastic potential criterion, has been used combined with the Hertz equation for the calculation of the contact stress. A complete study on the critical load conditions and the value of the critical contact stress has been carried out, considering a wide range of the values of the geometrical parameters. As a result, a recommendation for pitting load capacity calculations of vacuum-gearing spur and helical gears is proposed.