In this paper an attempt has been made to study the contact stresses among the helical gear pairs, under static conditions, by using a 3D finite element method. The helical gear pairs on which the analysis was carried out were 0°, 5°, 15°, 25° helical gear sets. The Lagrange multiplier algorithm has been used between the contacting pairs to determine the stresses. The effect of friction was varied at the point of contact which made the problem nonlinear and complicated. To simplify the problem, a range of average static coefficients of friction, from 0 to 0.3, has been considered as the scope of study. The variation of contact stresses with helix angle and also with friction coefficients has been discussed. The commercial finite element software used was ANSYS and the results were compared with analytical calculations. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd.