Study on hydrodynamic lubrication and friction reduction performance of spur gear with groove texture

Spur gears are widely used in aerospace, energy power and other fields due to their advantages of convenient design and manufacturing. However, in the process of spur gear transmission, the tooth surface wear and adhesion are prone to failure, which seriously affect the life of the gear transmission. In order to minimize the frictional wear during gear transmission, a groove-type tooth surface texture is proposed in this paper. The core size parameters of the groove texture are optimized through CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) fluid simulation and groove texture cylindrical roller process experiments. Gears with groove texture are prepared by using the laser processing technology, and comparative friction wear tests are conducted. The experimental results show that the maximum and minimum damage area rates of the spur gears with groove texture are, respectively, 84.8% and 84.9% lower than those of the spur gears without groove texture. The anti-adhesion ability is also significantly improved in the gears with grove texture. In addition, the average friction coefficient of the spur gears with groove texture is significantly reduced, which effectively reduces the transmission dynamic pressure lubrication and friction in the spur gears.