The meshing contact performance of spiral bevel gears is critical for transmission accuracy and service life but is inevitably influenced by manufacturing deviations. Existing tooth contact analysis (TCA) and lubrication-related studies for spiral bevel gears are mostly based on ideal theoretical tooth surfaces, failing to reflect the actual meshing state of as-machined gears with inherent machining deviations, and have poor robustness for complex deviated spatial surfaces. To accurately assess the actual meshing state, this paper proposes a novel contact performance analysis method based on a high-precision digital tooth surface reconstructed from one-dimensional probe measurement data. Unlike traditional TCA methods that rely on complex principal curvature calculations, this approach eliminates the mounting distance parameter by simplifying the meshing coordinate system, and employs a variable-radius cylindrical cutting method combined with a binary search algorithm to determine the instantaneous contact ellipse, effectively reducing computational complexity and improving solution robustness for deviated tooth surfaces. Experimental validation demonstrates that the digital tooth surface achieves a reconstruction accuracy of 2.6 × 10−5 mm. Furthermore, the method accurately predicts the contact pattern location and transmission error, with a discrepancy of only 4.7% compared to theoretical design values, which is highly consistent with the no-load rolling test results. This study confirms that the proposed method effectively reflects the actual meshing condition of machined gears, providing a practical theoretical foundation for the high-quality manufacturing and control of spiral bevel gears. Meanwhile, the high-fidelity contact characteristics of as-machined tooth surfaces output by this method can provide reliable input boundaries for thermoelastohydrodynamic lubrication (TEHL) simulation, friction loss prediction and anti-scuffing design of spiral bevel gears considering machining deviations.
Deng et al. (2026) studied this question.