Actual Pressure Distribution
Not a single nominal Hertzian value: a spatial field of contact pressures over the real contact area, including load migration and edge concentration.
Faster insights. Stronger gears.
TOOTH CONTACTANALYSIS
Real contact pressures and in-depth stresses resolved in seconds.
With FEA: tens of hours.
S&S GEARCORE delivers high-fidelity gear contact analysis with the speed and practicality engineers need — from concept to production.
ULTRA-FASTResults in seconds
HIGH FIDELITYReal contact pressures & stresses
ENGINEERING FOCUSEDBuilt for practical use
BROAD APPLICATIONSFrom R&D to production
WHY TOOTH CONTACT MATTERS
Contact-related damage is one of the principal drivers of gear durability loss.
Pitting, micropitting, edge loading and subsurface fatigue are directly linked to how pressure and stress are actually distributed over and beneath the tooth flank. That is why S&S GEARCORE focuses on the real contact state under real operating conditions.
HEAVY MECHANICS.LIGHT COMPUTATION.
Real contact pressures. Real subsurface stresses. Real operating conditions. No default Hertzian pressure assumption when the actual contact state is non-Hertzian.
WHY REAL CONTACT MATTERS
Hertz is the baseline. Real gear contact is the problem.
Classical analytical gear calculations often start from an idealized Hertzian contact assumption. That is useful as a reference, but it does not by itself resolve the full local pressure and subsurface-stress field created by finite tooth width, edge effects, operational misalignment, mounting deviations or flank modifications.
S&S GEARCORE is built to resolve those local effects directly — including the severe end concentrations that can dominate durability in real gearboxes and reducers.
Actual Subsurface Stresses
Subsurface stresses are resolved beneath the flank so the critical location and depth can be tracked as geometry and alignment change.
Actual Tooth Load Sharing
The solver determines how the transmitted load is actually shared between the teeth simultaneously in mesh instead of assigning one nominal normal force to one tooth.
EDGE EFFECTS. MISALIGNMENT. MOUNTING DEVIATIONS. PROFILE MODIFICATIONS.
These are precisely the effects that can turn a nominally acceptable gear pair into a locally overloaded contact. The solver is designed to expose them rather than average them away.
CURRENT SOLVER CAPABILITIES
One fast contact engine. Multiple real gear conditions.
The current solver analyzes concentrated contact in spur and helical cylindrical gears. It resolves both the surface field of contact pressures and the subsurface field of stresses, while also determining the real load share carried by each tooth simultaneously in mesh.
Distribution of Contact Pressures
High-resolution local distribution of contact pressures over the active tooth contact area, including edge-loading zones and pressure migration.
Subsurface Stresses
Stress distributions beneath the flank, allowing critical subsurface regions to be located and compared between geometries.
Real Tooth Load Sharing
Computes the actual force carried by every tooth simultaneously in mesh — beyond assigning a single nominal normal tooth force derived only from transmitted torque.
Ideal Meshing + Guilbault Correction
Ideal contact cases with or without profile correction, including the Guilbault correction where appropriate for the ideal edge-contact formulation.
Two-Axis Misalignment
Real operating cases with shaft-axis misalignment resolved about two axes, capturing the resulting load migration and edge concentration.
Profile & Flank Modifications
End relief, crowning profile and tooth-end chamfer / edge modification can be evaluated individually or as part of an optimization study.
Combined Real Cases
Misalignment + end relief, misalignment + crowning, and other combined supported configurations can be compared directly.
Spur + Helical Gears
The current production scope covers cylindrical gears with straight and helical teeth.
Rapid Geometry Optimization
Screen dozens of candidate geometries fast enough to turn contact analysis into an iterative engineering design tool.
PRESSURE. STRESS. REAL TOOTH LOAD. IN SECONDS.
The objective is not only to diagnose a contact problem, but to rapidly test the geometry changes that can reduce it.
WHAT YOU GET
From contact diagnosis to geometry recommendation.
For every supported configuration, the solver can deliver maps of contact pressures, subsurface stresses, tooth-by-tooth load sharing and direct before/after comparisons between candidate geometries.
Ideal Meshing
Uncorrected or corrected tooth geometry, including Guilbault correction where appropriate.
Two-Axis Misalignment
Quantify the real redistribution of load, contact pressures and subsurface stresses caused by operational misalignment.
End Relief / Crowning / Chamfer
Compare profile and flank modifications intended to soften edge loading and improve durability.
Misalignment + Modification
Evaluate corrective geometry under the same non-ideal condition that created the original contact concentration.
Actual Load per Tooth
Resolve the real force share of each tooth in simultaneous mesh instead of reducing the transmission to one nominal tooth-force value.
Dozens of Alternatives
Use seconds-per-case execution to screen large families of candidate geometries before committing to slower workflows or hardware changes.
THE MAIN ADVANTAGE
Contact optimization at the speed of an engineering decision.
One case: a few seconds. Representative complete contact analyses are obtained fast enough to support iterative design rather than a one-shot simulation workflow.
Fifty recommendations: a few minutes. Maps of contact pressures, subsurface stresses and load-sharing results can be generated for dozens of end-relief, crowning and combined configurations.
A comparable campaign of 50 detailed FEA variants may extend beyond a week depending on model preparation, meshing, nonlinear convergence, hardware and post-processing. The comparison is workflow-dependent; the point is the ability to explore far more design alternatives in the same engineering time.
CASE STUDIES
Real cases — one complete engineering story per case.
Failure evidence. Contact reconstruction. Corrective geometry. Engineering recommendation.
Each case is presented as one complete project. The buttons inside the case card open the dedicated case page directly at the selected section, where photographs, tables, solver graphs and detailed engineering explanations can be presented without squeezing them into the homepage.
Video not loading? Open the video directly.
SOLVER VALIDATION · ENGINEERING VIDEO
Results in seconds. Not hours.
3.18% deviation vs. FEA · 4–8 second computation
See how our gear-contact solver supports fast engineering assessment, damage investigation and geometry optimization through comparisons with finite element analysis.
Discuss your gear-contact case
REAL GEARBOX CASE
Deutz-Fahr tractor gearbox failure
Case overview ›
Damage evidence, operating history and the reconstructed contact condition.
Technical expertise ›
Failure interpretation, field of contact pressures, subsurface stresses and tooth-load distribution.
Proposed geometries to increase part's lifespan ›
Corrective end relief, crowning or edge geometry compared under the same operating condition.
INDUSTRIAL FAILURE ANALYSIS
Industrial Reducer Failure
Case overview ›
Premature gear tooth damage, pitting and spalling caused by shaft misalignment.
Technical expertise ›
Non-uniform load distribution, localized contact pressures and subsurface stress assessment.
Proposed geometries to increase part's lifespan ›
Evaluation of corrective tooth microgeometry to reduce localized contact loading.
Industrial Reducer Failure — Input parameters (English)
| Parameter | Symbol | Unit | Pinion | Gear |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Module | m | mm | 4 | — |
| Pressure angle | α₀ | ° | 20 | — |
| Number of teeth | z | — | 17 | 51 |
| Young’s modulus | E | GPa | 208 | — |
| Poisson’s ratio | ν | — | 0.3 | — |
| Normal force | F | N | 5000 | — |
| Force application point | rₓ | mm | Pitch point | — |
| Discretization grid | Nₓ × Nᵧ | — | 128 × 32 | — |
| Helix angle | β | ° | 15 | — |
| Face width | B | mm | 35 | — |
| Correction factor | cᵦ | μm | 5 | — |
| Face-width correction length | b | mm | 0.1 × B | — |
| Misalignment angle in Plane I | ν | arcmin | 0.7 | — |
| Misalignment angle in Plane II | φ | arcmin | 1 | — |
Source-table values; correction parameters are listed separately from the unmodified-profile numerical results. View full case overview →
RESEARCH
Research & Technical Insights
Applied research in gear contact mechanics, numerical methods and the behavior of spur and helical gears under non-ideal operating conditions.
Misalignment & Axial Offset — Gear Transmission
A comparative numerical investigation of gear contact behavior under shaft misalignment and combined misalignment with axial mounting offset, including 3D contact-pressure fields and subsurface von Mises stress distributions.
Related engineering examples and figures are available in the Case Studies section.
View Research Presentation →Explore Case Studies →Lead Crowning vs. Unmodified Tooth Flanks
A comparative numerical study of contact pressure distributions in aligned cylindrical gears, with and without longitudinal lead crowning. While peak pressures are of similar magnitude, crowning shifts the critical contact region away from the tooth edges.
Explore the original 3D contact-pressure fields, longitudinal and transverse distributions, contact areas, and subsurface von Mises stress results.
View Research Presentation →ABOUT
Gear contact mechanics built around real engineering decisions.
Stelian Cazan, PhD — Lecturer — ACADEMIC CV ↗ COMMERCIAL CV ↗ and Gear Contact Failure and Load Distribution Specialist , with a PhD in Mechanical Engineering.
Real gear-contact problems
Failure analysis, contact-stress concentration, geometry optimization to increase component lifespan, determination of real tooth-by-tooth load sharing, and determination of real load distribution and subsurface von Mises stresses for ideal gearing, operational misalignment, geometry modifications, mounting errors and combined cases.
Industrial gear and gearbox teams
We help gearbox manufacturers, gear manufacturers, repair and reengineering companies, drivetrain engineers and industrial clients increase gear durability and reduce the risk of contact-driven failure. Contact loading is one of the dominant failure drivers in higher-pair (Class 5) kinematic contacts, including gear-tooth contacts, so the focus is on identifying local pressure and subsurface-stress concentrations and improving the geometry before they become critical.
Real fields. Very high speed.
The solver computes real distributions of contact pressures, real fields of subsurface stresses and real tooth-by-tooth load sharing under the non-ideal operating conditions listed above, rather than relying only on a nominal Hertzian estimate. In current high-resolution benchmark cases, even very fine discretizations complete in under 10 seconds.
Send one real case
Send a gearbox or gear-pair case, request a contact analysis, or ask for a focused consultancy study. The objective is not only to identify the concentration, but to test multiple geometry improvements and recommend the configuration that best supports durability and service life.
From diagnosis to life improvement
Consultancy can cover reduction of contact pressures, edge-loading mitigation, end relief, crowning, tooth-end geometry, combined misalignment-plus-correction cases and comparative design studies.
Beyond contact alone
Where appropriate, consultancy can also include fracture-mechanics assessment, linking the stress state to crack behaviour and component-life estimation.
Validated on real gearbox cases
The solver has been validated against real gear-contact cases from gearbox technical expert investigations and against detailed FEA. In representative comparisons, the results showed deviations of up to about 3%, supporting engineering confidence in the computed pressure fields, subsurface stresses and tooth-load distribution.
REAL PRESSURE. REAL VON MISES. REAL TOOTH LOAD SHARING. UNDER 10 SECONDS IN CURRENT HIGH-RESOLUTION BENCHMARKS.
That speed makes it practical to compare many candidate geometries before committing to hardware changes — and the solver has already been checked against real gearbox expert-investigation cases and detailed FEA, with representative deviations of up to about 3%.
THE LONG-TERM VISION GOES BEYOND GEARS.
S&S GEARCORE is intended to evolve into a high-speed concentrated-contact platform covering all gear types,
wheel–rail contact, rolling bearings, cam–follower systems and wheel–road contact, with future extensions
toward composite and polymer materials.
TECHNOLOGY ROADMAP
Gears first. Concentrated contact everywhere next.
The items below are development directions, not claims about the current production solver. The objective is to preserve the same core advantage — fast, engineering-grade contact insight — while extending the physics and application range.
All Gear Types
Extend beyond spur and helical cylindrical gears toward bevel, hypoid and other gear-contact configurations.
Wheel–Rail Contact
High-speed concentrated-contact analysis for railway wheel and rail interaction.
Rolling Bearings
Contact fields and subsurface stresses in rolling-element bearing contacts.
Cam–Follower Contact
High-curvature contact and load transfer in cam–follower systems.
Wheel–Road Contact
Expansion toward concentrated-contact problems involving wheel and road interfaces.
Composites & Polymers
Future constitutive-model development aimed at composite and polymer components, beyond the current homogeneous linear-elastic material scope.
Fracture Mechanics & Life
Integrate contact-stress results with fracture-mechanics tools to support crack-growth and component-life assessments.
High-Speed Contact Platform
A unified concentrated-contact engine designed to make large parametric studies practical.
Keep the Speed
Every expansion is guided by the same principle: preserve fast computation so engineering teams can compare many alternatives, not just one.
WANT CONSULTANCY?
CONTACT US AT CONTACT@SSGEARCORE.COM
We help gearbox and gear manufacturers reduce contact concentration and improve durability.
Contact-related damage is one of the principal failure drivers in geared systems, especially when edge loading, misalignment or mounting deviations create severe local concentrations. The consultancy focus is therefore practical: identify where load, pressure and subsurface stress concentrate; explain why; then test geometry changes that can reduce the problem and improve the durability and expected service life of each analysed gear pair.
CONTACT CONSULTANCY THAT STARTS WITH THE REAL FIELD — NOT THE IDEALIZED ONE.
Identify the actual pressure and stress concentration, then test corrective geometry fast enough to compare many solutions before hardware is changed.
Why is the contact critical?
Field of contact pressures, subsurface stresses, real tooth-load sharing, misalignment and damage-location interpretation.
What geometry should change?
End relief, crowning, edge/chamfer changes and combined solutions can be screened directly against the same operating condition.
Which recommendation is best?
Dozens of alternatives can be ranked using contact pressures, stresses and tooth-load results instead of selecting one modification by intuition alone.
UP TO 50 GEOMETRY RECOMMENDATIONS — IN MINUTES.
Each candidate can be accompanied by contact pressures, subsurface stresses and load-sharing results. A comparable 50-variant detailed FEA campaign may take more than a week depending on workflow and computing resources.
SEND ONE GEARBOX CASE
Start with the gear pair that worries you most.
Uneven wear, edge loading, unexplained contact damage, operational misalignment or a microgeometry question? Send the basic geometry, transmitted load/torque and operating condition. We can first assess whether the problem fits the current solver scope.
Typical solver turnaround for a representative contact case: a few seconds.