Tribological properties of a helical gear pair considering interfacial slip between lubricant and tooth surface.

In this study, an interfacial slip model including the limiting shear stress is proposed and applied to the thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication (EHL) analysis of a helical gear pair. The main difference between the proposed model and the classical EHL model is that, the term of entrainment velocity in Reynolds equation is modified. The influences of interfacial slip, thermal effect, initial limiting shear stress and operating conditions on the tribological properties are evaluated. Due to the interfacial slip, the pressure distribution moves towards the inlet region, and the fluctuation distributions of entrainment velocity and film thickness are similar to the trigonometric function. The influence of thermal effect on interfacial slip cannot be ignored, especially in the case of high speed and heavy load. As the input torque and input rotational speed increase, the interfacial slip gradually extends to the whole meshing process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]