Geometric simulation of power skiving of internal gear using solid model with triple-dexel representation

Gear manufacturing is a fundamental technology for machine production. Power skiving has rapidly become an efficient method for the manufacturing of internal high-precision gears. To analyze the cutting force during power skiving, a geometric simulation of the power skiving process, particularly a visualization of the resulting machining shape and a prediction of the chip geometry generated during the cutting process, is important. In this study, we propose a novel method for precisely simulating the power skiving process using solid modeling. The resulting shape of power skiving is computed by repeatedly subtracting the swept volume of the cutting edge from a solid model of the workpiece. To realize a robust computation in a subtraction operation, a solid model with triple-dexel representation is used to represent the workpiece shape. To accelerate the operations, the parallel processing function of a graphics processing unit (GPU) is used. An experimental simulation system is implemented, and some computational experiments are conducted.