Design formulae for a concave convex arc line gear mechanism

Abstract. Line gear is a newly developed gear mechanism with point contact meshing according to space curve meshing theory. This paper proposes a new form of line gear with a couple of concave convex arc tooth profiles. It has four characteristics. First, contact curve of the driving line gear is a cylindrical spiral curve. Second, two axes of a pair of line gears are located in the same plane with an arbitrary angle. Third, at the mesh point, normal tooth profiles of a line gear pair are a couple of inscribed circles. Namely, they form a couple of concave convex tooth profiles. Fourth, the tooth profile of a driving line gear is a convex, that of a driven line gear is a concave, and they are interchangeable. If only consider that the arcs of teeth at meshing point are tangent, the actual tooth surfaces may interfere outside of the meshing point. In this paper, the geometric condition of the tooth surface for a concave convex arc line gear mechanism is derived, and the optimal formulae of the tooth profile parameters are derived on basis of interference proof conditions. Finally, the 3-D modeling and kinematic simulation of line gear pairs show that the proposed line gear pairs can perform transmission normally. The proposed method will extend the application of line gear in the conventional power drive.