Experimental procedure for the evaluation of tooth stiffness in spline coupling including angular misalignment

• A dedicated spline coupling test rig has been used for experimental tests.
• An original hexapod measuring device has been developed to measure teeth deformation.
• Experimental spline coupling teeth stiffness has been obtained.
• Experimental results have been compared with theoretical and numerical (FEM) ones.
• The effect of angular misalignment on the tooth stiffness has been analysed.

Tooth stiffness is a very important parameter in studying both static and dynamic behaviour of spline couplings and gears. Many works concerning tooth stiffness calculation are available in the literature, but experimental results are very rare, above all considering spline couplings. In this work experimental values of spline coupling tooth stiffness have been obtained by means of a special hexapod measuring device. Experimental results have been compared with the corresponding theoretical and numerical ones. Also the effect of angular misalignments between hub and shaft has been investigated in the experimental planning.