Spur Gears 523

11.7 Transmitted Load

With a pair of gears or gearset, power is transmitted by the load that the tooth of one gear
exerts on the tooth of the other. As pointed out in Section 11.4, the transmitted load Fn is
normal to the tooth surface; therefore, it acts along the pressure line or the line of action
(Figure 11.12). This force between teeth can be resolved into tangential force and radial force
components, respectively:

Ft = Fn cos
(11.19)
Fr = Fn sin = Ft tan

The quantity is the pressure angle in degrees. The tangential component Ft, when multi-
plied by the pitch-line velocity, accounts for the power transmitted, as is shown in Section
1.10. However, radial component Fr does no work but tends to push the gears apart.
The velocity along the pressure line is equal to the tangential velocity of the base circles.
The tangential velocity of the pitch circle (in feet per minute, fpm) is given by

dn
V= (11.20)
12

where
d represents the pitch diameter in in.
n is the speed in rpm

In design, we assume that the tangential force remains constant as the contact between
two teeth moves from the top of the tooth to the bottom of the tooth. The applied torque
and the transmitted load are related by

d d
T= Fn cos = Ft (11.21)
2 2

Fr
Fn
Pressure line
Ft
P
Pitch circle

r
rb Base circle

Figure 11.12
Gear tooth force Fn, shown resolved at pitch point P.