Causes and Effects of Gear Misalignment

Chapter 1

Introduction

Gears are highly engineered machine elements that must be designed not only to
meet the torque, speed, life and noise requirements under nominal conditions, but also to
compensate for adverse effects due to manufacturing errors, variations and elastic
deformations of the support structures. In addition to the elastic deformation of the
support and structures, manufacturing errors in the gears, shafts and housing must also be
considered in the design. Assuming that perfectly aligned shafts support a gear pair in
which the shafts, bearings and the housing are all rigid might lead to severe wear and
noise problems.

A reasonably accurate gear pair, with a limited amount of tooth surface

manufacturing errors and operated under ideal (no error and no deflection) support
conditions, can be expected to exhibit a good load distribution along its face width. If the
shafts are mounted on bearings with position errors, or the shafts, bearings and housing
deflect under load, and then the rotational axes of the gears will no longer be parallel to
each other. These conditions cause a mismatch of meshing teeth, resulting in a non-
uniform load distribution along the face width, with perhaps very little or no load on one
side and a larger edge load on the other. Such poor load distribution conditions might
result in contact and tooth bending stresses at the overloaded side that are higher than the
allowable (designed) limits, thus triggering premature bending or contact fatigue failures.
Such poor load distribution also accelerates the rate of wear at the gear tooth surfaces.

The common problem in the rotating mechanisms is shaft misalignments.

Misalignment in the meshing gear results in uneven load distribution resulting in shift of
peak bending stress to the edge of face width. Misalignment in meshing alters the
location of contact on tooth flank and may lead to large stresses and increase noise of
gear pair.

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When we have problems with gearset failure, a common diagnosis

is misalignment. What exactly is that and how do we prevent it? The second most
common "killer" of good gear sets is misalignment (dirt, or abrasive wear, is first). Gear
teeth simply won't carry the load if they don't touch, and the portion that does touch has
to carry an overload to make up for the missing contact area. Gear mesh misalignment
may result in shifts in the load distribution of a gear pair that results in increasing contact
and bending stresses, moving the peak bending stresses to the edge of the face width, and
might also increase gear noise.

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Chapter 2

Literature review

V. Roda-Casanova [1], When two gears are misaligned, they do not mesh
properly and a defective contact pattern is produced, leading to uneven load distributions
along the face width of the gear teeth. These uneven load distributions may result in
bending and contact stresses exceeding the permissible values, that can cause premature
fatigue failure. However, the negative consequences of the misalignment of the gears are
not limited to reducing its load carrying capacity. It has been shown that they also favor
the occurrence of other adverse effects, such as an increase of wear in the contact
surfaces, an increase of heat generation and the introduction of transmission errors,
vibration and noise. The main causes that produce the misalignment of gears are the
manufacturing and assembly errors the distortions produced by thermal and centrifugal
effects, and the elastic deflections of the elements of the transmission under load.
The axial displacement of the pinion is practically zero with the simple supported
shaft, but it is not zero with tapered roller bearing as supports because of the axial load
induced by the radial load in the bearings. This displacement increases as the mounting
position of the pinion over the shaft gets away from the midpoint of the bearing span.
The relationship between all parameters of the misalignment (angular misalignment,
transversal displacement and axial displacement) and the transmitted torque is practically
linear in both types of models (with simple supported shaft and with bearing supported
shaft) because of the high stiffness of the elements of the transmission.
The determination of the total transversal displacement of the pinion by
computing separately the displacement produced by the deflection of the roller bearings
and the displacement produced by the deflection of a simply supported shaft and, then, by
applying the principle of superposition is a common practice. The studies demonstrated
that, within the scope of this work, this practice implies a low error because the small
deflections of the structural elements reduce the non-linearity of the coupled structural
and contact problem.

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Ankur Saxena[2], The mesh stiffness decreases due to misalignment of gear shaft
and friction forces. Effect of friction during approach and recess is visible while
calculating the time varying mesh stiffness (TVMS). These results show that
misalignment and friction cannot be neglected while calculating TVMS of gear pair. The
TVMS values obtained from this study can be used in finding response of gear pair using
dynamic modeling.
Vilmos V. Simon[5], The tooth spacing error gradually worsens the load sharing
among the tooth pairs instantaneously engaged, until it eliminates one of the tooth pairs
from contact. The negative effects of tooth spacing errors cannot be considerably reduced
by gear tooth modifications introduced by the use of an oversized hob.The tooth
modifications introduced by an oversized hob are of no effect in the case of tooth contact
pressure and transmission error increase caused by the angular misalignment of worm
shaft in the vertical, middle, plane of the gear, too. The effects of angular misalignments
of worm shaft in the plane passing through the worm axis and parallel to the gear axis,
eh, can be reduced by hob oversize, but only in the case of its positive values; for
negative values of angle eh this type of modifications is not useful. It is the same for
worm gear axial offset, only for its positive values can be reduced the tooth contact
pressure and transmission errors by the use of an oversized hob.

Shuting Li [4], the effect of tooth profile modification, lead relieving and
transmitted torque on tooth contact stresses, load-sharing ratio and mesh stiffness of a
pair of spur gears is investigated in this paper. The effect of misalignment errors of the
gear shafts on the plane of action and lead crowning on tooth mesh stiffness is also
investigated It is found that the tooth profile modification has significant effects on tooth
load-sharing ratio and mesh stiffness. The contact of two pairs of contact teeth at the
double pair tooth engagement positions can become the contact of one pair of contact
teeth when the tooth profile modification is great.
Sheng Li [3] The impacts of the angular misalignment that is tangent to the plane
of action on the contact fatigue life of micro pitting crack nucleation are examined,
considering an example spur gear pair. The computational approach involves the solution

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of the governing equations of the spur gear mixed EHL for the determination of the
surface traction distributions, the evaluation of the near-surface cyclic stress
concentrations using a boundary element based near-surface stress model, and the fatigue
damage assessment using a multi-axial fatigue criterion. The lead direction circular
crown is demonstrated to be an effective method for the alleviation of the misalignment-
caused heavy tooth surface load and thus extends the fatigue life. It is shown the
optimized crown magnitude for fatigue life improvement exists, and it is dependent on
both the misalignment amount and the input torque of the gear pair.

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Chapter 3

Causes of Misalignment

There are several factors which contribute to gear misalignment. But the main
causes that produce the misalignment of gears are the manufacturing and assembly errors.
Causes of misalignments can be broadly categorized as follows-

3.1 The distortions produced by Temperature gradients and Centrifugal forces.

These gradients are particularly apparent in helical gears, where the lubricant
tends to be pushed along the helix and heats up as it progresses. The blank then heats up
and expands, thus giving an apparent change in helix angle, as well as a slight change in
all gear geometry parameters due to thermal expansion.
In thin-rim gears that spin at high speed, the centrifugal forces may be great
enough to cause a differential deflection across the tooth face width, hence creating a
form of misalignment.

3.2 Bearing and housing deflection

Since both of these deflections are at the shaft support, they may be added
together. Bearing stiffness increases with load, so the increase in bearing deflection with
load is not directly proportional. As with shaft deflections, bearing deflections are in the
line of action direction if only a single gear is mounted on the shaft, but are more general
when additional forces are applied to the shaft. Housing deflections, which can exceed
those of the bearings, are usually quite linear with load, but may need to be measured or
need a detailed finite element analysis in order to be determined with some certainty. One
should also be aware that the stiffness at the bearing has five degrees of freedom; three in
translation, and two in rotation. Thus, to account for them properly, a complete bearing
stiffness matrix must be determined.

Some things that will help are:

-Tightening up the pinion bearings if they're adjustable.
-Reinforcing the pinion bearing support structure by adding extra bracing.
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-Re-aligning the pinion to tip the free end toward the gear, so it's misaligned under light
loads and bends into full face contact as the load is applied. This works best if the load is
always applied in one direction.

3.3 Shaft deflection-

a) Shaft bending deflections.
For a single gear on a shaft, this deflection will be along the line of action,
but when additional gears and other external forces are applied to the shaft, these
deflections will take on a general direction. Also, for wide face width gears, this
misalignment may have some curvature error as well as slope error. It is important to note
that this misalignment is reasonably linear with load, so as load increases, the
misalignment also increases.
b) Shaft torsional deflections.
In gears with wide face widths and low numbers of teeth, the twisting of
the shaft due to the transmitted torque gives a helix angle or lead error

3.4 Gear misalignments produced by the elastic deflections under load:

Fig1. Description of the misalignment of the pinion

In a pinion and rack transmission, the power is usually transmitted from the
pinion to the rack through the contact between their teeth. As a consequence of this
contact, a pressure distribution is generated within the contact areas of the teeth,

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producing the deflection of the elastic elements of the transmission and causing the
misalignment of pinion respect to the rack. The study of this misalignment is one of the
main objectives of this investigation. The misalignment of the pinion respect to the rack
can be parameterized by three translations and two rotations of the pinion (the
misalignment associated to the third rotation refers to the transmission error). In this
proposal the misalignment of the pinion is divided into three categories:
a) Angular misalignment in the plane of action ().
b) Angular misalignment in a plane perpendicular to the plane of action ()
c) Parallel misalignment (change of center distance)

The parallel misalignment is divided into two components, since they may have
different repercussions on the transmission:
1) Transversal displacement of the pinion (XY)
2) Axial displacement of the pinion (z)

The parameters of misalignment taken into account are summarized in Fig. 2. It is

important to remark that the misalignment due to deformations in roller bearings and the
misalignment due to the deformation of the shaft are not independent, because the two
phenomena are coupled in certain degree. But the studies demonstrated that this
dependency is low for commercial transmissions (in which both stiffness of shaft and
bearings are relatively high) and the analysis of these variables will provide information
about the relative importance of the two phenomena in the total misalignment of the
pinion.

Fig.2 Summary of misalignments.

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3.5 Study of the influence of the applied torque on the misalignment of the pinion-

When the power is transmitted through the pinion and rack transmission, a
pressure distribution is generated in the contact area between the gear teeth. This contact
pressure distribution produces the deflection of the elastic elements of the transmission,
causing the misalignment of both gears. As the applied torque becomes higher, the
contact pressure is also higher, and it produces larger deflections that may increase the
misalignment. This is the reason why a direct relation between the applied torque and the
magnitudes of misalignment is expected regarding the axial displacement of the pinion,
in spur gears there is not theoretical axial load and the induced axial load due to shaft
deflection is negligible for small deformations. As a result, in all simple supported cases
(SS) the obtained axial displacement is practically zero. But in bearing supported cases
(BS), the radial load of the bearings induces a thrust load that may displace the pinion
depending on its position over the shaft.

3.6 Study of the contribution of the deflection of the bearings to the misalignment of
the pinion:
To evaluate the contribution of the deflection of the bearings to the angular
misalignment of the pinion, the ratio R, defined as the relation between the angular
misalignment produced by the deflection of the shaft (s) and the angular misalignment
produced by the deflection of the bearings (b) , has been analyzed. From the definition
of this ratio, several theoretical ranges with different meaning can be defined; the angular
misalignment produced by the deflection of the bearings completely compensates the
angular misalignment produced by the deflection of the shaft, resulting a zero angular
misalignment of the pinion with respect to the rack.

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3.7 Some other factors causing gear misalignment:

1. Lead slope error. This error, which occurs when the gear teeth are cut, is described
by the AGMA quality number and directly gives line of action misalignment.
2. Lead wobble. This error in lead slope results from an angular eccentricity that occurs
when mounting the gear. This occurs either when it is placed on its manufacturing arbor
or when it is mounted to its shaft, and it wobbles relative to the shaft. shows sample lead
charts for four teeth taken at 90-degree increments around a gear. The changing slopes of
the four charts indicate lead wobble, and the average slope is the lead slope error listed
above.

Fig.3 Lead inspection data showing lead wobble

3. Bore parallelism and skew- Here the error is most likely to be defined in terms of the
x and y misalignments defined in the previous section. Often prints are very clear about
the parallelism misalignment, but are sometimes a bit hazy with regard to the skew
misalignment. Yet skew misalignment will have a greater effect on LOA mesh
misalignment.
4. Gear blank deflections. The blanks of gears with thin rims tend to deflect away from
the line of action on the overhanging section of the gear tooth. This deflection will tend to
reduce the load carried in this region of the tooth.
5. Spline and bearing clearances. Clearances that exist in mounting either the gear or
the bearing will result in a tilting of the part in the line of action direction.
6. Bore parallelism error. This error, which may be obtained from the housing
engineering drawing, might cause either a contraction or extension of the housing center
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distance.
7. Shaft, bearing, and housing deflections. These deflections will usually cause an
increase in the center distance.
8. Mounted gear runout. Mounted runout includes the effect of manufactured
eccentricity as well as mounting eccentricity. These eccentricities have the effect of
increasing and then decreasing the effective shaft center distance at a period of one shaft
rotation per each gear.
9. Housing thermal expansion. This has the effect of increasing the center distance, but
one must remember that the gear elements and shafts might also expand. If they are made
of different materials, differential expansions must be considered.
10. Clearance deflections. The mean deflection due to shaft and bearing clearances will
add to the center distance change.

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Chapter 4
Effect of misalignment and remedies
4.1 Active gear contact region

When gear meshes with perfect align condition of shaft, maximum torque is transferred at
the line of action in between pinion and the gear. The transmission force Fn, which is
normal to the tooth surface, as in fig.4, can be resolved into a tangential component,
Ft and a radial component, Fr as refer to equation:

There will be no axial force, Fx. and direction of the forces acting on the gears are shown
in The load is considered uniform as refer to Fig.5a but when the axial misalign happens
the load will be offset from the contact area of the tooth flank as demonstrated in Fig.5b.

The load of the active contact in case of axial misalignment can be specified by coating
the teeth by a thin layer of a soft material which explain the pressure zone on the meshing
tooth. The alteration of distribution load concentrated on one side (B') as refer to
Fig.6 can be described as a parabolic function based on the Eq. 3

Fig.4 Forces acting on a spur gear mesh

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Fig.5 Load distribution along tooth surface (a) Align and (b) Misalign

Fig.6 Theoretical active Load distribution along tooth surface

Finally the equation:

Hence, Eq. 4 use as represents the active gear width at tooth surface in misalignment
condition with refer to the static condition. In actual, gear always operates in dynamic
motion. From Buckinghams dynamic load equation that consider as a small machining
error and deflection of teeth under load cause periods of acceleration, inertia forces and
impact loads on the teeth similar to variable load superimposed on a steady load
(Buckingham). Those the equation:

and

= cos

where, is dynamic load, is transmitted load, V is the pitch line velocity, m/s, B is
the face width actual length, mm, c is the dynamic factor depending on machining error, e
is the error in tooth shape, 21 is the value of constant k.

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Hence:

where, a is the material contact constant depending on angle, Ep, Eg is the Modulus
Young for pinion and gears.

To represent the theoretically active misalignment contact width (B'), it can be divided
into several segments of interval where each segment dynamic forces is calculated as
centre forces with the equation:

Thus, to determine the distribution forces on the gear contact during misalignment would
be based on the integration of Eq. 7 with Simpson's rule method for numerical
integration.

4.2 Effect of misalignment on force distribution on gear tooth

Load distribution on gear tooth for aligned shaft is assumed to be uniformly distributed,
but for the misaligned shaft it is not the same. Due to misalignment error load distribution
will follow a parabolic distribution.

Fig 7 Force resolution on spur gear tooth (a) when shaft is aligned, and (b) when shaft is
misaligned

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Table 1. Forces on gear tooth

Force For aligned shaft For misaligned shaft
Tangential Fcos1 Fcos1cos
Radial Fsin1 Fsin1
Axial 0 Fcos1sin

4.3 Effect of Shaft Misalignment on the Stresses Distribution of Spur Gears

Fig 8 Stress distribution results from ansys

Fig 9. The relationship between the misalignment angle and the equivalent stress on spur gear.

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4.4 Effect of misalignment on time varying mesh stiffness (TVMS) of spur gear pair-

Misalignment is considered as one of the most common problems in rotating

machines, which leads to generate vibrations and extra dynamic loads on transmitting
gear teeth. Good alignment for gear means that shafts are parallel to each other, do not
have angular misalignment and are not offset with respect to their centerlines.

Fig10 Effect of misalignment on TVMS for healthy gear tooth

It has been found that the values of total effective mesh stiffness have changed as
compared to healthy gear conditions. The mesh stiffness decreases due to misalignment
of gear shaft and friction forces.

4.5 Pitting-
Pitting started as a local overload due to slight misalignment and progressed
across the tooth in the dedendum portion to mid face. Here, the pitting stopped and the
pitted surfaces began to polish up and burnish over. This phenomenon is common with
medium hard gears. On gears of materials that run in well, pitting may cease after
running in, and it has practically no effect on the performance of the drive since the pits

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that are formed gradually become smoothed over from the rolling action. The initial
pitting is non-progressive.
During initial pitting, if the loads are high and the corrective action of initial
pitting is unable to suppress the pitting progress, then destructive pitting sets in. Pitting
spreads all over the tooth length. Pitting leads to higher pressure on the unpitted surface,
squeezing the lubricant into the pits and finally to seizing of surfaces.

Fig. 11 Tooth surface destroyed by extensive pitting

4.6 Tooth breakage:

Breakage is often due to load concentration along the tooth length as a result of
errors in machining and assembly or of large elastic deformation of the shafts; tooth wear
leading to weakening of the teeth results in increased dynamic loads. Shifting of sliding
gears into mesh takes place without stopping the rotation of the shafts. Cracks are usually
formed at the root of the teeth on the side of the stretched fibers where the highest tensile
stresses occur together with local stresses due to the shape of the teeth. Fracture occurs
mainly at a cross section through the root of the teeth. To prevent tooth breakage, the
beam strength of the gear teeth is checked by calculations. Fatigue pitting of the surface
layers of the gear teeth is the most serious and widespread kind of tooth damage that may
occur in gears even when they are enclosed, well lubricated and protected against dirt.

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4.7 Gear noise

The gear noise arises due to several reasons. At the contact point due to error in
the gear profile, surface roughness, impact of tooth and sliding and rolling friction;
bearings, churning of the lubricant, and windage.
The principal methods of combating noise are: improving the tooth finishing
operations, changing over to helical gearing, modifying the profile by flanking,
increasing the contact ratio, equalizing the load along the face width of the tooth rim,
using crowned gears, and improving the design of the covers and housings.

4.8 Remedy on gear misalignment:-

1. Lead crowning-
Gear tooth modifications, such as lead crowning, are often recommended
to compensate for misalignment. Lead crowning means that the tooth centre is
slightly thicker than the tooth edges and is usually described as a circular arc
profile. The use of crowning shifts the peak load from the tooth flank edges and
therefore reduces the risk for high contact pressures at the edges, which can
otherwise result in a shortened service life. You can reduce the backlash
requirements and allow the gears to wear in rather than wear out.

Fig.12 crowning of gear tooth

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2. Surface hardening and heat treatment-

Surface hardening techniques are widely used to improve the rolling
contact fatigue resistance of materials. Carburized and hardened gears have optimum
load-carrying capability. Heat treatment and surface hardening processes helps in
increasing strength of the gear. It also offers greater surface resistance against pitting.

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Chapter 5
Concluding remark
The relationship between all parameters of the misalignment (angular
misalignment, transversal displacement and axial displacement) and the transmitted
torque is practically linear in both types of models (with simple supported shaft and with
bearing supported shaft) because of the high stiffness of the elements of the transmission.
The consideration of bearing supports reduces the angular misalignment because
the deflection of the bearings partially compensates the angular misalignment produced
by the deflection of the shaft. In other words, not including the bearings in a model of the
transmission produces an overestimation of the angular misalignment of the pinion.
The relative importance of the contribution of the shaft deflection and the
contribution of the deflection of the bearings to the angular misalignment of the pinion
depends on the relative stiffness of shaft and bearings.
The contribution of the shaft deflection to the transversal displacement of the
pinion can be more important than the contribution of the deflection of the bearings. But
this importance decreases as the pinion gets closer to the supports and as the stiffness of
the shaft relative to the stiffness of the bearings increases.

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References
[1] V. Roda-Casanova, F. Sanchez-Marin, Contribution of the deflection of tapered
roller bearings to the misalignment of the pinion in pinion-rack transmission.
Mechanism and Machine Theory 109 (2017) 7894.
[2] Ankur Saxena, Anand Parey, Manoj Chouksey, Effect of shaft misalignment and
friction force on time varying mesh stiffness of spur gear pair. Engineering
Failure Analysis 49 (2015) 7991.
[3] Sheng Li, An Investigation on the Influence of Misalignment on Micro pitting of
a Spur Gear Pair. Tribol Lett (2015) 60:35.
[4] Shuting Li, Effects of misalignment error, tooth modifications and transmitted
torque on tooth engagements of a pair of spur gears. Mechanism and
Machine Theory 83 (2015) 125136
[5] Vilmos V. Simon, Influence of tooth errors and shaft misalignments on loaded
tooth contact in cylindrical worm gears, Mechanism and Machine Theory 41
(2006) 707724.
[6] M. R. Lias, T.V.V.L.N. Rao, M.Awang and M. A. Khan, The stress distribution of
gear tooth due to axial misalignment condition. Journal of applied sciences
12(23): 2404-2410,2012.
[7] Robert L. Machine Design an integrated approach. Norton.Pearson.
[8] Earle Buckingham, Analytical mechanics of gears. Dover publications, inc.

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