Spur Gear Design With An S-Shaped Transition Curve Application Using

MATHEMATICA And CAD Tools

S. H. Yahaya
1
, M. S. Salleh
3

Faculty of Manufacturing Engineering
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka
Melaka, Malaysia
1
saifudin@utem.edu.my,
3
shukor@utem.edu.my
J. M. Ali
2

School of Mathematical Sciences
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Penang, Malaysia
2
jamaluma@cs.usm.my


AbstractThe aim of this paper is to introduce the application
of an S-shaped transition curve in designing and generating a
spur gear. In engineering field, the spur gear usually designed
by using an involute curve where this curve needs to use a
tracing point method to obtain a curve while an S-shaped
curve can obtain a curve directly. The comparative study
between an S-shaped method and direct method in Computer
Aided Design (CAD) tool also covered.
Keywords-S-shaped transition curve; Curvature continuity;
CAD tool; Mathematica; Spur gear
I. INTRODUCTION
Curve or surface design is very vital in Computer Aided
Design (CAD) or in Computer Aided Geometric Design
(CAGD). In this area, curve or surface is designed by using a
certain function with several curve or surface properties. One
of the examples in curve design is transition curve. The
transition curve is defined as a curve that has a specific
radius and degree of curvature which means that the
curvature changes either increasing or decreasing along the
curve length. Transition curve also can be called as an
easement. According to Baass [1], five transition curve cases
in highway design have been identified, one of the cases is
circle to circle with an S transition curve. This design
template will be used and applied in this paper.
The function that used to design an S-transition curve is
Bzier-like cubic which this function in Bzier form. The
function has the lowest degree of polynomial and also has a
shape parameter where this parameter used to control the
curve shape. The Bzier form is usually used in CAD and
CAGD application because of its geometric, numerical
properties and easy to implement. The main objective of this
paper is to design a spur gear by using an S-shaped transition
curve and design template from Baass [1]. In manufacturing
engineering, designer or manufacturer usually used an
involute curve where the application of tracing point method
is applied to obtain the curve while an S-transition curve can
directly create the curve.
Many related papers have been produced in this area.
This includes planar G
2
transition between two circles with
a fair cubic Bzier curve and a planar cubic Bzier spiral
written by Walton and Meek [2, 3], Habib and Sakai [47]
have summarized G
2
cubic transition between two circles
with shape control, G
2
planar spiral cubic interpolation to a
spiral, G
2
planar cubic transition between two circles and
circle to circle transition with a single cubic spiral.
Sheveleva et al. [8] have proposed algorithms for analysis of
meshing and contact of spiral bevel gear while the computer
aided design of elliptical gear has studied by Bair [9].
Hwang and Hsieh [10] have discussed about the
determination of surface singularities of a cycloidal gear
drive with inner meshing.
The proposition of this paper begins with some notation
and convection which are needed in preparing this paper.
The next discussion will touch on the introduction of
Bzier-like cubic function, explanation on circle to circle
with an S-shaped transition curve together with some
numerical examples. After that, the discussion on spur gear
tooth design using an S-shaped transition curve application
and coordinate selection using Mathematica 6.0 will be
covered. Finally, spur gear solid will be designed by using
CATIA V5 as a CAD tool from the selected coordinates
with some conclusion and several recommendations will be
included for future work.

II. NOTATION AND CONVECTION
Consider the Cartesian coordinate system such as vector,
). , (
y
A
x
A = A The Euclidean norm or length of vector A is
denoted by ,
2
y
2
x
A A + = A with an angle measured in this
paper is anti-clockwise angle. The derivative of a function
f is denoted by . f The dot product of two vectors, A and
B is written as AB.
A planar parametric curve is defined by a set of points,
)) ( ), ( ( ) ( t y t x t z = with t given in real line interval. In this
paper, we use t ]. 1 , 0 [ The cross product of two vectors, A
and B is symbolized by

referring to Juhsz [11], which is

defined by A^B = sin
x y y x
B A B A B A = where
is anti-clockwise angle. The tangent vector of a plane
parametric curve is stated by . ) (t z If 0 ) ( t z then the
definition of curvature ) (t z can be defined as,
3
) (
) ( ) (
) (
t z
t z t z
t

= (1)
2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development
978-0-7695-3892-1/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCTD.2009.76
426
2009 International Conference on Computer Technology and Development
978-0-7695-3892-1/09 $26.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICCTD.2009.76
426
The derivative of Equation (1) will express as,
5
) (
) (
) (
t z
t
t

=


(2)
where,
)} ( ) ( {
)} ( ) ( { 3 )} ( ) ( {
2
) ( ) (
t z t z
t z t z t z t z
dt
d
t z t

=


The next section will explain about Bzier-like cubic
function with the shape parameters.

III. BZIER-LIKE CUBIC FUNCTION
Consider a Bzier-like cubic function taken from Ali et
al. [12] as shown below:
] 1 , 0 [ ,
3
))
1
2 )( 1 ( 1 (
2
(
2
)
2
) 1 (
1
(
1
))
2
) 1 (
0
(
0
)))
0
2 ( 1 (
2
) 1 (( ) (
+ +
+ + + =
t P t t P t t
P t t P t t t z



(3)
where
3
,
2
,
1
,
0
P P P P are the control points and
1
,
0
are
the parameters controlling the curve shape. In this paper, the
value of ) 3 , 0 (
1
,
0
to guarantee the Bzier- like cubic
function does not change the sign or is a positive. The next
discussion will focus on circle to circle with an S-shaped
transition curve using Bzier-like cubic function.

IV. CIRCLE TO CIRCLE WITH AN S-SHAPED
TRANSITION CURVE
By using the Equation (3) with the control points as
defined by Habib and Sakai [6] with some modifications are
made where,
) * ( ), * (
), * ( ), * (
3
1 1 3
2
3 2
1 0 1 0 0 0 0
t r c P t k P P
t h P P t r c P
+ = + =
= =

(4)
with the knot points are,
]} sin[ ], {cos[
3
]}, cos[ ], sin[ {
2
]} cos[ ], sin[ {
1
]}, sin[ ], {cos[
0


= =
= =
t t
t t

(5)
with
1
,
0
c c are the centers of two circles,
0
,
1
,
1
,
0
r r are
the radii of two circles,
0
,
1
,
0
,
1
P P h =
,
2
,
3
P P k =
and
, are the angles of controlling two circles,
0
,
1
. An S-
shaped transition curve is designed by using curvature
continuity where this continuity has a standard condition
which shown below.
1
1
1
0
1
0
r
t
r
t = = = = ) ( , ) (
(6)
In order to design an S-shaped transition curve, these two
conditions in Equation (6) must be fulfilled. Equation (6)
will also be used to estimate the parameter values, h and . k
A few examples will be discussed in the next section to
ensure the theoretical part above is correct.


Figure 1. Circle to circle with an S-shaped transition curve.
V. NUMERICAL EXAMPLES
1. Let we have } , { }, , { 1 1
1
1 1
0
= = c c and . 1
1 0
= = r r The
and values used are rad 2689 2. and rad 1817 2. with
the shape parameters,
1 0
, equal to . .5 2 We find that the
parameters k h, equivalent to 9 0. after applied all the
equations above. This example is shown in Figure 2.


Figure 2. Example 1.
2. Let assume } , { }, , . { 1 1
1
1 5 0
0
= = c c with 5 0
0
. = r and
. 1
1
= r The angles employed are rad 2217 1. = and
rad 8397 3. = with 8 1
0
. = and . 2
1
= We discover
that h and k approximate to 7 0. and . .9 0 The result is
demonstrated in Figure 3.


Figure 3. Example 2.
427 427
From the examples above, all the conditions in Equation
(6) have been fulfilled. The next discussion will be the
explanation of designing a spur gear using an S-shaped
transition curve where the algorithm above is applied.

VI. SPUR GEAR TOOTH DESIGN
The curve most commonly used for gear tooth profiles is
involute curve. The transition curve application is popular
used in highway or railway whereas in this paper, we would
like to design the spur gear tooth profile by applying an S-
transition curve.
Let we design spur gear profile with six tooth set. We
employ center, c
0
} , { 0 0 = with r
0
1 = and r
1
. .588 0 = Inside
these two radii, we have another radii, r equivalents to
. .206 0 The shape parameters,
1 0
, used are 5 2. and 8 1.
with angles in ] . , . [ rad rad 2360 5 5236 0 based on the
quadrant. By applying all the inputs, we acquire that the
parameters, k h, approximate to 3 0. and . .4 0 The spur gear
profile is visualized by using Mathematica 6.0 software and
the result is shown in Figure 4.



Figure 4. Spur gear tooth profile using an S-shaped transition curve.
After the gear profile is completed, the next process is to
build up the 3D solid model. The model will be designed by
using CATIA V5 software. This software is used because its
capability in designing 3D solid model. In addition, the gear
tooth shape that will be designed by using CATIA V5 must
be the same as in Figure 4 because an S-shaped curve has
been used to produce the tooth as in Figure 4. In order to do
that, the coordinate will be selected along the generated
curve (Figure 4) by using Mathematica 6.0 software. After
that, the selected coordinate will be used to design a solid
model. The detail of these procedures will be discussed in
the next section.

VII. COORDINATE SELECTION
In Mathematica 6.0, there are several drawing tools in
graphics palette. One of the tools is get coordinates as
shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Drawing tools in Mathematica 6.0.
We click the get coordinates tool and move the mouse
pointer over the 2D graphics or 2D plot. The approximate
coordinate values of mouse pointer are displayed. Then, click
to mark the coordinates. We can click at other position to add
markers. The sample is presented in Figure 6.


Figure 6. Example using get coordinates tool.
Finally, use Ctrl+C to copy the marked coordinates and
Ctrl+V to paste these coordinates into an input cell as shown
in Figure 7.


Figure 7. List of coordinates in an input cell.

VIII. SPUR GEAR SOLID
In designing a spur gear model, the procedure should
start by graphing 2D spur gear using CATIA V5. We
redesign the spur gear from the selected coordinates. In this
paper, 34 coordinates are chosen and the spline package in
CATIA V5 will be applied to join all the coordinates. All the
fundamental aspects in creating a spur gear also included
such as an outer circle and the root circle. We also made
some adjustments in this design where the gear thickness is
set to be 4 mm, gear shaft radii equivalents to 2.836 mm and
outer circle radii is 20.02 mm. The adjustment is very much
needed especially in gear shaft to give more strength to the
model and visually pleasant (Figure 8). However, the tooth
shape remains the same as in Figure 4.



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Figure 8. Spur gear tooth profile and its solid model from an S-shaped
method using CATIA V5.
In this paper, we also show that the spur gear solid as
designed by using a direct CATIA method (a method using
an involute curve) is used to design this spur solid. All the
packages in CATIA V5 are applied except for spline
package. Normally, spline package is used for the
coordinates or points. All the measurements above such as
gear shaft radii are maintained. The design of this solid is
illustrated in Figure 9.









Figure 9. Spur gear solid using direct CATIA method.
According to both methods, an S-shaped method, which
is more on mathematical features such as a certain formulae,
must be defined or the design parameters must be declared.
The direct method reflects to an engineering drawing style.

IX. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This research shows that an S-shaped transition curve can
be applied in gear tooth design particularly for spur gear. The
tooth shapes from the findings almost the same. It can be
seen clearly in Figure 4, Figure 8 and Figure 9. The
integration of softwares Mathematica 6.0 and CATIA V5 is
very useful in this research. In future, gear design analysis
will be carried out to know the applicability of the design.
The analysis covers about the dynamic analysis and gear
noise modeling. Once all the analyses have been done, this
spur model will be fabricated by using Computer Numerical
Control (CNC).

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by UTeM under research
FRGS grant, FRGS/2007/FKP (17) F0042. The authors
gratefully acknowledge to everybody for their helpful
comments.

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2
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2
cubic transition between two circles with
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2
planar spiral cubic interpolation to a
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2
planar cubic transition between two
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