FACE GEARS:

Geometry and
Strength
Ulrich Kissling and Stefan Beermann

Management Summary
There are three distinct gear types in angle drives. The most commonly used solutions
are bevel and worm drives; a less-often implemented alternative is a face gear drive.
This solutionwith its specic advantages and disadvantagesis discussed in this
document.

Dr. Stefan Beermann, is vice

president of KISSsoft AG, having previously served from
1996-1997 as KISSsoft product
manager for L. Kissling & Co.,
AG. His 2000 doctorate thesis
was Simulation of Vibrations
in Gearboxes Applying Spectral
Simulation.
Dr.-Ing. Ulrich Kissling is
managing director and CEO
for KISSsoft AG, the software
company he founded in 1998.
He was previously managing
director of L. Kissling Co. SA,
a Swiss gear manufacturer.
Kissling is chairman of the
gear committee for the Swiss
Standards Association and
a voting member for
Switzerland in the ISO TC 60
committee. He has also written extensively on calculation
procedures for machine design
and power transmission, and
has conducted numerous seminars, courses and lectures on
gear technology.
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Introduction
Face gears have existed for centuriesthe
Chinese implemented them on wagons, and
the Romans used them in water and windmills.
Around the middle of the last century, much
attention was givenespecially in the United
Statesto development of the theory and
machining of involute face gears. Calculations
used in manufacturing proved to be extraordinarily complex. Face gears were at this
time installed in relatively lightly loaded gear
boxes for transmitting motion. Around 1990,
an effort was undertaken in the Netherlands
by Crown Gears, which produced face gears
under the product name Cylkro drive (Ref.
1). Further development was also undertaken
in the United States and Japan (Refs. 2, 3).
Face gear projects were also initiated in
German academic institutes, with the aim of
developing a strength calculation based on
experimental data. The further development of
manufacturing techniques, most of all in grinding, has allowed for the successful use of face
gears in high-performance gear systems.
The main advantage of the face gear over
the bevel gear is the axial freedom of the pinion. With face gears, there is no need for the
exact axial positioning of the pinion, as is
required of a bevel pinion if an ideally distributed contact pattern is desired. This freedom
proves especially advantageous in precision
technology. In extremely lightly built drives,
which give rise to significant deformations in
the housing, the contact region is not signifiJanuary/February 2007

cantly influenced. For this reason, the helicopter industry has dedicated great effort to implement this type of drive.
The manufacturing of face gears, most of
all for large series, proves to be very challenging. The large research and development
expense attached to the development of methods for the machining of such gears required
a dedicated and costly commitment to engineering and licensing of the product, which of
course affects pricing. The relatively high cost
was greeted by a subdued market response, but
there nevertheless exists a clear interest in the
product. Crown Gears has since suspended its
development of face gears, and the work has
been taken up by ASS AG of Switzerland.
For the manufacturing of face gears not
using hobbing or shaping (i.e., by plastic molding, sintering or pressing), the tooth form of
the face gear will be defined by direct calculation, and a tool developed for its manufacture.
Calculation of the Geometry and
the Tooth Form
A face gear has similarities to a rack in a
continual arc (Fig. 1). In contrast to this simplest of all drives, the engineer fights against
the restrictions which emerge, due to the bending of the rack form during the sizing of a
face gear set. Because the tooth flanks of a
straight-toothed face gear must run parallel to
a radiusthe contacting pinion having flanks
parallel to its own axisit follows from contact theory that the pressure angle must reduce
from the outer to inner radius. The following

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Figure 13-D view of a face gear in KISSsoft, produced by the calculation of the mesh process of a face gear
with a shaping cutter.

equation (for our purpose considering only

straight tooth forms here) applies as the central
formula for the determination of the geometry
for face gears
m z cos n
(1)
, (1)
d n 2
2

cos 2

where:
z2 is the number of teeth of the face gear,
2 is the pressure
of the face gear at
d 2 min/angle
max cos 2 min/ max
mmin/
(2)
diameter
d2, max
z 2 cos n
n is the pressure angle of the spur-pinion at
the reference circle,
mn is the module of the pinion (Ref. 1).
In the example in Figure 2, the pressure
angle changes from about 39 on the outer
diameter to around 10 on the inner. This leads
to very steep tooth flanks on the internal side,
through which the involute becomes very
shortand is represented on only a small part
of the tooth heightfollowed by an undercut
which further reduces the usable region. On
the outer part, the tooth gets a pointed tip. As
a result, minimum and maximum diameters
are determined, which limit the total possible
tooth width of the gear. This represents a dis-

tinct difference compared to a bevel gear pair.

While bevel gears can transmit a higher torque
through a higher tooth width, the face gear
pair is limited to the region forming acceptable
tooth contact conditions with a spur gear.
By clever choice of width offset bv (Figure
3), i.e., through a shift of the tooth width center opposite the reference circle, the maximum
permissible tooth width can be optimized.
When sizing a face gear, it makes sense,
after fixing a minimum and maximum presmndetermine
z 2 cos n the inner and
sure angle, d
to next
, (1)
2
outer diameter. By setting
outer and inner
cos the
2
diameter as reference diameter, Equation 1 is
redefined for the range of module available.

mmin/ max

d 2 min/ max cos 2 min/ max

(2)
(2)
z 2 cos n

Beyond considering the raw numbers, it is

helpful to also consider a graphical representation of the teeth. With a little experience, the
engineer will determine from a 2- or 3-D graph
(for example, Figs. 1 or 2) in which direction
the significant parameters should be changed
in order to reach an optimum solution.

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The overwhelming number of applications

use straight-toothed face gears. Helical face
gears can, with the appropriate design procedure, offer benefits in strength and noise
development.
In contrast, the problem emerges that the

flanks are no longer symmetric in that the left

flank no longer corresponds to the right. In
practice, this implies that a possible undercut
on a flank appears earlier on one side than
on the other. In Figure 2, for example, a distinct undercut can already be seen on the right

Figure 2Plot of the pairing of a cylindrical helical with a face gear. Three sections of the face gear are illustrated.
Inner: Violet; Middle: Green; Outer: Red.

Figure 3Definition of the tooth offset bv and the addendum change hake/i at the inner and outer diameters.

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Figure 4Trajectory (blue) of the surface point of the pinion (red) relative to a face gear surface (green). The position with zero relative speed defines a potential contact point.

gear flank at the inner diameter, while on the

left flank there is only a very slight undercut.
Likewise, the pressure angle in the example is
different, being 31.2 (on the middle section)
on the left, and 29.5 on the right flank of the
tooth.
These differences on the flank have an
influence on the strength so that transmissible
power is different, depending on the direction
of rotation. If only one direction is to be used,
then the flank to be used can be optimized
without consideration of the opposite flank.
Experience teaches that theoretical geometry considerations, which describe a flank
form in terms of the involute function, lines
and arcs, always tend to a limit sooner or later.
Tried-and-tested, and much safer, are tooth
form calculations which are based upon simulation of the meshing process, or, better yet, on
a simulation of the machining process. In these
simulations, the trajectory of a point on the
active surface is traced (Fig. 4) until the speed
normal to the surface of the tool is a zero point
(Fig. 4). These positions are potential places of
contact on the tooth form surface. The actual
points of contact must then be determined,
removing any so called imaginary points
whose relative motion satisfies the contact criteria but whose position is actually outside of

the material on the gear surface. Attempting to

identify the difference between real and imaginary points presents the greatest difficulty to
this approach. Apart from the usual standard
algorithms for the classification of points in a
plane, empirical approaches must be employed
which recognize the known properties of the
required tooth form in order to achieve a welldefined tooth form with a degree of certainty.
The calculation of the 3-D tooth form of
the face gear can, on the basis of traditional
production methodsmeshing with a pinionlike shaping cutterbe defined in this way
(Fig. 1). The 3-D body can be output in a variety of graphics formats so that, in any arbitrary
CAD system, a form can be constructed in
order to manufacture face gears using other
production methods such as injection molding,
sintering or form forging.
The 2-D representation is well-suited for
the checking of undercut or pointed teeth in a
face gear. In the previous diagram (Fig. 2), the
tooth forms at the inner-, mid-, and outer-gear
diameters of the face gear are simultaneously
drawn. If the gear is rotated in discrete steps,
the meshing conditions at each position can
be checked throughout the meshing cycle. In
the case of extremely pointed teeth or unacceptable contact ratio, the tooth height can be

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Figure 5Position of the contact lines on the face gear flanks.

shortened (Fig. 3), analogous to the approach

in hypoid gears.
In order to reduce sensitivity from errors
in the axis position or axial distance, crowning can be produced on the tooth flanks. This
can be applied relatively easily to face gears
produced with a pinion-like shaping cutter (or
equivalent milling tool) which has one or two
teeth more than the intended pinion. A comparison of the tooth forms shows the influence
of the higher tooth number of the cutter on the
crowning of the tooth form. For a large-width
offset, bv, of the face gear, the crowing can be
shifted to one side.
Each transverse section through the spur
with the corresponding part of the face gear
basically corresponds to a rack and pinion system. Based on the rack theory, it is possible to
calculate the pressure angle, contact line and
contact ratio in each section (Fig. 5).
Strength Calculation
Following are various approaches for the
strength calculation of the face gear:
1) Development of proprietary calculation
methodsfor example, a finite element method (FEM) calculation combined with a pressure evaluation.
2) Adjustment of the method for the resis58

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tance calculation of spur/helical gearing (e.g.,

ISO 6336).
3) Adjustment of the method for the resistance calculation of bevel gearing (e.g., ISO
10300).
The first possibility is not practical, in that
it is possible to spend years conducting a comprehensive series of measurements. The development of ISO6336, for example, has taken
decades to prepare, being founded upon multiple theoretical and practicalby means of
test rigswork programs.
The third method is relatively simple, but
leads in the end to ISO 6336. The ISO 10300
calculation method converts the bevel geometry in the first step to an equivalent helical
gear, and then derives calculation methods
directly from ISO 6336.
This leaves only the second approachthe
adjustment to a suitable standard for spur/
helical gears (e.g., ISO 6336), to which can
be added some of the more similar concepts of the ISO 10300. Critical points to
consider in doing this are that the contact
ratio from inner to outer diameter changes
to such an extreme that only a calculation
based on contact ratio at the mid-diameter is carried out (analogous to bevel

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Figure 6Course of stress curves of a face gear: geometry of the face gear corresponds to the test gear of
Akahori (Ref. 2).

gears), or that only the average of the three

calculations at the inner, mid and outer diameters is considered. Furthermore, all the important dimensions of the spur/helical gearing
being used are in conjunction with the plane
of the reference circle. But in a face gear, the
reference circle lies in a plane at right angles to
the reference circle of the pinion. Certain formulae must therefore be adjusted to cope with
the concept of an infinite radius. This problem
is identified by the analysis of rack gearing
Calculation to ISO 6336
The Crown Gears method of calculating
the strength of face gears is based upon the
spur/helical calculation according to ISO 6336
(Ref. 1). Because of the curvature in the path
of contact, there is a raised total contact ratio
due to the so-called lead overlap ratio. This is
somehow comparable to the overlap ratio in
helical gearing in which helical-toothed face
gears contain an overlap ratio that is given
by the helix angle . A virtual helical angle,
v, can be derived from the curvature of the
contact line, with which the effect can be considered using the helix angle factors Y and
Z. Transverse contact ratio becomes the
value used in the middle of the tooth width.
The derivation of the face load coefficient KH

and transverse coefficient KH, according to

methods from ISO 6336, cannot be directly
implemented for face gears. Again using the
Crown Gears calculation, the values are usually set to KH = 1.5 and KH = 1.1, so that a
similar approach to the calculation of bevels
(ISO 10300) is chosen.
Calculation to ISO 10300
As previously mentioned, the use of the
strength calculation according to ISO 10300
for bevel gears can be an appropriate alternative. Face gears belong to the class of bevel
gears, and can be thought of as a limiting
case, with cone angle 0 (pinion) and 90 (face
gear). The strength calculation for bevel gears
is conducted on the basis of an equivalent
spur/helical gear, the spur/helical having the
same tooth form as the bevel. In the case of the
face gear, this gives the virtual tooth number
Z1v = Z1 and Z2v = for the pinion and gear,
respectively.
A validation with Crown Gears calculations, and the methods of ISO 6336 or ISO
10300, produces a very good match in that
deviation at the root and flank safety factors in
all cases is under 10%, with most under 5%.
However, because the Crown Gears method is
restricted concerning the correct length of the

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Figure 7 (Top & Bottom)Scoring pitting safety factor against flash and integral temperature and speed at tip and
root. Geometry of the face gear corresponds to the test gear of Akahori (Ref. 2).

Table 1Calculated safety factors for the face gear (Ref. 2).
Calculated factor:

Root Pinion

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Flank Pinion

Flank Gear

With KH = 1.5, KH = 1.1:

0.43

0.34

0.77

0.88

With KH = 1.0, KH = 1.0:

0.70

0.56

0.98

1.13

contact lines, the ISO6336 method is recommended.

Load distribution over the tooth width.
The load distribution at the root and on the
flank can be calculated very accurately by
using an FEM analysis. But this requires a
comparably large time investment, while a
very quick method for the estimation of the
Hertzian pressure and root stress is given by
performing the calculation in discrete steps as
a rack. In doing so, the course of the pressure
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at the pitch point and the root stress (calculation procedure according to ISO 6336 for
racks) can be defined, assuming a constant linear load, across the tooth flank (Fig. 6).
Akahori carried out investigations of
ground case-hardened face gears (m n=2.75
mm; b=18 mm; bv=5 mm; Z=28:85) (Ref. 2).
The tooth root stress, which has been measured
via strain gage, provides a good match with the
calculated course of tooth root stress for the
face gear (Fig. 6). Also, the photo of the tooth

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flank after 107 load cycles shows a pitting condition, which corresponds well with the region
of higher Hertzian pressure on the tooth flank
in Figure 6 (Ref. 2).
Theoretical Safety Factors
As with every gear, a validation of the
strength is given as safety factors for pitting
and root strength. In order to evaluate these
factors, it is important to know the minimal required values. This is a general problem associated with machine construction.
Minimum safety values can (according to the
conditions and requirements) be very different,
and should be determined most of all on the
basis of experience and proven results from
a test rig. In cases where nothing similar is
known, the following values can be used as a
starting point:
Minimum root safety factor (SF
SFmin): 1.4
Minimum flank safety factor (SH
SHmin): 1.0
Regarding face gears, well-documented
results are readily available. During the measurements of Akahori (Ref. 2), a distinct pitting was observed at a driving torque of 675
Nm after 107 load cycles. Cracks or breaks in
the root did not appear. A validation according to ISO 10300, when using the factors discussed above (KH
KH = 1.5 and KH = 1.1), gives
factors in Table 1 by calculation. These factors
are impressively low. In Akahoris testing, the
gear used was a ground face gear of very high
precision. The face load co-efficient chosen in
this case was set much too high. A validation
through ISO 10300 with factor KH=1.0 gives
a flank safety factor of 1.0, and root safety factor of 0.80. The flank safety factor corresponds
roughly to expectation, but the root safety is so
low that a break in the root can be expected.
Evidently the calculation method is very conservative in this case. Based on the analysis
above, where obviously the gear must be hardened, it can be cautiously interpreted that, for
industrial applications with face gears made
from steel, the root strength is less critical than
in spur gears, and presumably the safety factors can in fact be set as follows:
Minimum root safety factor (SF
SFmin): 1.0
Minimum flank safety factor (SH
SHmin): 1.0
Calculation of the scoring safety factor.
The calculation of the scoring safety factor
is difficult because of the very different sliding velocities, and the changing flank pressure
across the tooth flank. In the Crown Gears
calculations, no check for scoring is conducted
(Ref. 1). On the other hand, Akahori reported

massive problems with scoring in the higher

sliding speed region (Ref. 2). It is therefore
necessary to consider adding similar calculations to detect a scoring problem. As previously described in the stress distribution, a
reasonable possibility can be the calculation of
the scoring safety factor according to German
Institute for Standardization (DIN) 3990 in
discrete steps. Figure 7 shows the course of
the scoring safety, according to criteria of flash
and integral temperature across the tooth flank.
In order to arrive at a realistic calculation,
all steps should be calculated at the same temperature. In working through the calculations,
it can be shown that the factor according to
the integral temperature contains many jumps.
This occurs if the point E of the contact line is
close to the pitch point. The re-calculation of
the flank temperature at point E relative to the
average flank temperature with the formulae of
(DIN) 3990, becomes somewhat imprecise. On
this principle, the use of the flash temperature
criterion is recommended for face gears.
Summary
The face gear is certainly a challenging
component to design, but its use in some applications is significantly more advantageous than
an equivalent bevel gear solution. Through the
availability of software for sizing face gears
and their associated tooling, it is now possible
to efficiently overcome special calculation and
manufacturing problems associated with tooth
forms of this type in arriving at a practical,
alternative solution.
References
1. Basstein, G. and A. Sijtstra. New developments concerning design and manufacturing of
face gears. Antriebstechnik, 32 (1993), Nr.11.
2. Akahori, H., Y. Sato, Y. Nishida, and
A. Kubo. Test of the durability of Face
Gears. Organi di trasmissione, 2002, Nr.12
oder MTP2001-Fukuoka, The JSME Int.
Conference, 2001, Japan.
3. Lewicki, D.G., R.F. Handschuh, G.F. Heath,
and V. Sheth. Evaluation of Carbonized Face
Gears, The American Helicopter Society 55th
Annual Forum, Montreal, Canada, 1999.

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