Bending Strength of Carburized Forged Spur Gear

This paper deals with the evaluation of influence of the manufacturing methods precision forging and conventional hobbing on the bending fatigue strength of carburized gears. The forging has advantages in productivity and strength. The forged gear has a continuous directed fiber flow which runs along the gear profile. To clarify the effect of strength enhancement, a bending fatigue test is performed for the forged and the hobbed gears. The material of test gears is SCr420H in the JIS and all gears are carburized. The electrohydraulic servo-controlled fatigue tester is used in the constant stress-amplitude fatigue test. The strength is expressed by the fillet stress level, which is calculated by FEM. The obtained strengths of forged and hobbed gear are 1613 MPa and 1490 MPa, respectively. The strength of forged gear is increased 8% in comparison with that of the hobbed gear. The surface hardness is higher and the surface roughness is smaller in the forged gear, however, the residual stress is approximately same. The effect of improvement of the roughness by forging on the strength is small in 1%, and the main reason of the improvement of fatigue strength is considered as the continuous fiber flow.