Surface layer modification charts for gear grinding

In this paper, an approach to predict thermo-mechanically induced changes of sub-surface properties during discontinuous profile gear grinding is presented. The approach faces industrial boundary conditions, such as varying material stock removal as well as the drawback of possible localized thermal damage on the ground tooth flanks. The basic idea is to consider the sub-surface properties after grinding as a function of “tempering time” and temperature due to the short-time heat treatment by the grinding process. Consequently, a time-temperature-diagram showing surface layer modifications for profile gear grinding based on the measurement of local contact zone temperatures has been set up.