Application of the bilateral filter for the reconstruction of spiral bevel gear tooth surfaces from point clouds

Abstract

Reconstruction of gear tooth surfaces from point clouds obtained by noncontact metrology machines constitutes a promising step forward not only for a fast gear inspection but also for reverse engineering and virtual testing and analysis of gear drives. In this article, a new methodology to reconstruct spiral bevel gear tooth surfaces from point clouds obtained by noncontact metrology machines is proposed. The need of application of a filtering process to the point clouds before the process of reconstruction of the gear tooth surfaces has been revealed. Hence, the bilateral filter commonly used for 3D object recognition has been applied and integrated in the proposed methodology. The shape of the contact patterns and the level of the unloaded functions of transmission errors are considered as the criteria to select the appropriate settings of the bilateral filter. The results of the tooth contact analysis of the reconstructed gear tooth surfaces show a good agreement with the design ones. However, stress analyses performed with reconstructed gear tooth surfaces reveal that the maximum level of contact pressures is overestimated. A numerical example based on a spiral bevel gear drive is presented.