His teaching and research interests include parametric

Communicating and sharing information through Internet technologies have become common practice in most enterprises. Communication and web-centric applications are also influencing the design process. Driven by the need to compete in a global economy, companies are using Internet technologies to concurrently collaborate on design problems. Global collaborative engineering helps to decrease timeto-market while also decreasing production costs. Computer-aided design developers have recognized the potential of the Internet for collaborative engineering and have implemented applications for the sharing and communicating of design data. This paper reviews web-centric product-data management (PDM) applications available from four leading computer-aided design companies

Implementation of a Finite Element Model for Gear Stress Analysis Based on Tie-Surface Constraints and Its Validation Through the Hertz's Theory

A new finite element model for stress analysis of gear drives is proposed. Tie-surface constraints are applied at each tooth of the gear model to obtain meshes that can be independently defined: a finer mesh at contact surfaces and fillet and a coarser mesh in the remaining part of the tooth. Tie-surface constraints are also applied for the connection of several teeth in the model. The model is validated by application of the Hertz’s theory in a spiral bevel gear drive with localized bearing contact and by observation of convergency of contact and bending stresses. Maximum contact pressure, maximum Mises stress, maximum Tresca stress, maximum major principal stress, and loaded transmission errors are evaluated along two cycles of meshing. The effects of the boundary conditions that models with three, five, seven, and all the teeth of the gear drive, provide on the above mentioned variables are discussed. Several numerical examples are presented.The authors express their deep gratitude to the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport, for the financial support received through the scholarship Ref. PRX16/00416 from the Program of Mobility Stays for Senior Professors and Researchers at Foreign Centers for High Level Education and Research, in the frame of the Spanish State Program for Scientific and Technical Research and Innovation 2013-2016