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Modelling approaches for surface densification process of sintered gear teeth

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Abstract

Sintered gears manufactured through powder metallurgy technology contain residual porosity that can make them inadequate for high power supply. Crack propagation is significantly enhanced by both residual porosity and cyclical stresses involving the teeth. The use of densification processes can highly improve their performances, permitting the reduction of the residual porosity. Among the densification processes, the rolling assumes a key-role. The process permits the densification of the tooth flanks, the most stressed parts of the wheel. However, the performances of the rolled wheel depend on several process parameters, whose setup phase requires several efforts and many experiments. Finite element (FE) model can be a helpful tool, allowing a faster estimation of the process parameters, reducing waste and costs linked to the experimental tests. In this sense, FE modelling techniques discussed in literature only cover the simulation of spur gears densification process, since they consist of in-plane 2D finite elements. In this paper, different numerical modelling techniques, based on 2D finite elements, are proposed to simulate the densification process of spur gears and used to perform a tendency analysis to explore the effects of wheelbase reduction between the forming rollers on the material densification. Material densification appeared higher for reduced wheelbases, but an increasing cavity was observed at the tooth root as the wheelbases decreases. Moreover, a FE model based on 3D finite elements is proposed to reproduce numerically the rolling process of a helical gear. The accuracy of the 3D FE model was measured against the results provided by some experimental tests, herein discussed too. A good agreement between numerical and experimental results was observed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli, via Roma, 29-81031, Aversa, Italy

    Alessandro De Luca & Francesco Caputo

  2. Pontillo Officine Meccaniche & C. Via Aquino Trav. Forestiero, 84018, Scafati, (SA), Italy

    Francesco Naclerio

  3. Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Salerno, Via Giovanni Paolo II, 132-84084, Fisciano, Italy

    Raffaele Sepe

  4. Department of Chemical, Materials and Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II, Piazzale V. Tecchio, 80-80125, Naples, Italy

    Enrico Armentani

Authors
  1. Alessandro De Luca
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  2. Francesco Caputo
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  3. Francesco Naclerio
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  4. Raffaele Sepe
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  5. Enrico Armentani
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Contributions

E. Armentani, A. De Luca, F. Caputo, and R. Sepe contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and experimental data collection and analysis were performed by F. Naclerio. Numerical model development and numerical data collection and analysis were performed by A. De Luca, F. Caputo, and R. Sepe. Project was supervised by E. Armentani. The first draft of the manuscript was written by A. De Luca, and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Alessandro De Luca.

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De Luca, A., Caputo, F., Naclerio, F. et al. Modelling approaches for surface densification process of sintered gear teeth. Int J Adv Manuf Technol 132, 1769–1789 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-024-13432-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00170-024-13432-y

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