Comparative Finite Element Analysis of Reconstructed New and Worn Tooth of Spur Gear

Spur gear wears either due to rubbing action between the meshed gears or by the occurrence of unwanted elements like dust particles, metal fragments, etc. which reduces its efficiency and service life. It is always a challenging task to determine the remaining life of a component or the strength of a component once wear has occurred on teeth surface. This paper presents an application of reverse engineering approach for reconstruct the spur gear 3D CAD model using scanned data. A gear has been scanned using PICZA 3D laser scanner (Roland LPX60). The digitized data of spur gear was collect in the form of .stl data and point cloud data file formats. The scanned spur gear has been reconstructed in 3D CAD model before and after wear using SolidWorks modeling software. The finite element analysis has been carried out for tooth strength assessment between original and worn out gear teeth. These results were obtained on ANSYS Workbench. The results will allow for a better understanding of existing limitations for power transmitting with worn out gear tooth and also may be helpful to determine remaining life cycle of gear under loading conditions. Keywordsspur gear; reverse engineering; 3D laser scanner; reconstruct of 3D CAD model; FEM analysis