Calculation method of the contact area in flank machining for continuous generating grinding

•A geometrical model of the contact area for generating grinding is developed.•The contact area calculation is possible without any simulation software.•The difference between the initial cut and the sequential cut is considered.•A high degree of correlation between calculated and simulated values arises.

The results of grinding processes like surface roughness or grinding burn are often characterized by the usage of the tool specification and process parameters but also by the geometrical contact. Whereas the calculation of contact length or contact area as well as the specific removal rate is clearly defined for processes like plane or cylindrical grinding, they are still a field of research in context of continuous generating gear grinding. In the scientific environment the contact parameters for continuous generating grinding have been already computed via numerical simulations. But the dependency of the contact parameters on the simulation software restricts their industrial usability. One of the focuses in the actual gear machining analysis at the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools is the analytical modeling of the geometrical contact values for continuous generating grinding. In this paper the geometrical model of the contact area is presented and validated via numerical simulation. Thereby, a high degree of correlation between calculated and simulated values arises.