For certain operating conditions and environments, liquid lubrication of gear drives is not possible, or can only be implemented with great restrictions or at high cost.
Attempts to eliminate mechanical drive trains in automobiles and trucks have had limited success because of cost, weight, dynamic characteristic, and efficiency of the alternative components.
In this article the authors present a loaded tooth contact analysis (LTCA) method for asymmetric gears that provides an accurate and efficient design tool for analyzing and comparing designs. The presented method is implemented in SMT's MASTA software. The authors also present an example comparative study using this tool for an automotive application.
The first chapter from a new book by Dr. Hermann J. Stadtfeld provides an overview of the need for new technologies and approaches when it comes to developing transmissions for electric vehicles.
There's never been a better time to put the spotlight on e-drive transmissions and electric vehicles. They're obviously not just coming: they're already here. Just check out any auto show or
showroom. That's why Gear Technology magazine is pleased to present the first installment in a series of chapters excerpted from Dr. Hermann J. Stadtfeld's newest book, "E-Drive Transmission
Guide - New solutions for electric- and hybrid transmission
vehicles."
This study deals with the modeling and consideration of misalignments in planetary gearboxes in the optimization and design process. Procedures for taking into account misalignments in cylindrical gearboxes are standardized and established in industry. Misalignments of central elements like carrier, sun gear or ring gear in planetary gearboxes, cause varying contact positions and variable loads, depending on the angular position of the central elements. This load, which is variable over the circumference, is not taken into account in the standardized procedures, despite its effects on the loads on the gears.
In the wind power industry, the reliability of powertrain components plays a major role. Especially in multi-megawatt offshore applications, an unplanned replacement of drivetrain
components can lead to extremely high costs. Hence, the expectation of wind farm operators is to forecast the system reliability. Under the leadership of the VDMA (Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), the standardization paper 23904 "Reliability Assessment for Wind Turbines" was published in October 2019.
For years, Reliance Gear Corp. has manufactured gears for the aerospace industry. Located in Elmhurst, IL, Reliance has served as a Tier 2 or Tier 3 supplier. (Tier 1 suppliers work directly with the aerospace primes, the Boeings and Embraers of the world.) Like many gear shops, Reliance is certified under quality management standard ISO 9001. And its aerospace customers were satisfied with that certification. Until
two years ago.
The oil-off (also known as loss-of-lubrication or oil-out) performance evaluation of gears is of significant interest to the Department of Defense and various rotorcraft manufacturers, so that the aircraft can safely land in an accidental loss-of-lubricant situation. However, unlike typical gear failure modes such as pitting or bending fatigue where early detection is possible, gear failure in an oil-off situation is very rapid and likely catastrophic. Failures rapidly result in the loss of torque transmission and the inability to control the aircraft.
The paper is not the proof of a discovery, but it is the description of a method: the
optimization of the microgeometry for cylindrical gears. The method has been applied and described on some transmissions with helical gears and compound epicyclic, used on different hybrid vehicles. However, the method is also valid for industrial gearboxes.
Noise issues from gear and motor excitation whine are commonly faced by
many within the EV and HEV industry. In this paper the authors present an advanced CAE methodology for troubleshooting and optimizing such NVH phenomenon.
Electrification has already started to have a noticeable impact on the global automotive industry. As a result, the drivetrains of hybrid (HEV) and full electric vehicles (EV) are facing many challenges, like increased requirements for NVH in high speed e-Drives and the need for performance improvements to deal with recuperation requirements. Motivated by the positive validation results of surface densified manual transmission gears which are also applicable for dedicated hybrid transmissions (DHTs) like
e-DCTs, GKN engineers have been looking for a more challenging application
for PM gears within those areas.
The first planetary drive I helped take apart had three stages of through hardened spur gears encased in a simple cast iron tube with plates on both ends. Both input and output shafts rotated on taper roller bearings, but everything else had simple bronze bushings.
Gear Industry Steps Up to Automation
Challenges in Auto Industry. Automotive parts are always moving. They are zipping across conveyors, smashing into each other in bins and traveling across the production chain before ending up inside an automobile. For gears, this can be a somewhat precarious situation as they tend to run best when they're free from nicks, abrasions, cracks or other damages.
John Harrison (1693–1776) - a British clockmaker (and carpenter) whose extremely precise chronometer enabled seafarers to calculate longitude (also known as east-west axis) with a degree of accuracy that until then was unheard of.
Business is finally starting to get back to usual in the big gear world, which offers us a chance to look back at the greatest lesson on how to survive an economic downturn. Includes the sidebar: "Brass Tacks with Klingelnberg."
The usage of modern thrusters allows combining the functions of the drive and the ship rudder in one unit, which are separated in conventional ship propulsion systems. The horizontally oriented propeller is supported in a vertically rotatable nacelle that is mounted underneath the ship's hull. The propeller can directly or indirectly be driven by an electric motor or combustion engine. Direct drive requires the installation of a low-speed electric motor in the nacelle. This present paper concentrates on indirect drives where the driving torque is transferred by bevel gear stages and shafts from the motor to the propeller.
A high number of wind turbine gearboxes do not meet their expected design life, despite meeting the design criteria of current bearing, gear and wind turbine industry standards and certifications.
Which transmission system will come out on top is a hot topic in the automotive community. With multiple transmission-centric conferences on the horizon, there will be plenty of debate, but how much will the answer actually affect gear manufacturers, and when?
Oil-out conditions, or conditions
in which an aircraft is
operating without any oil in its
gearbox or transmission, are
devastating for an aircraft's
hardware. Even the sturdiest gears
usually can't last 30 minutes under such
conditions before they catastrophically
fail, and the whole system usually follows shortly after. That doesn't leave pilots with a whole lot of time to find a suitable location to land in the case of an oil-out emergency.
Multiple possibilities are available to increase the transmissible power of girth gears. These solutions include: using a larger module, increasing of the gear diameter through the number of teeth, enlarging the face width, and increasing the hardness of the base material. The first three parameters are mostly limited by cutting machine capability. Module, outside diameter, and face width (for a cast gear) can theoretically be increased to infinity, but not the cutting machine dimensions. There are also practical limits with respect to the installation of very large diameter/large face width gears.
This paper presents a new approach to repair industrial gears by showing a case study where pressure angle modification is also considered, differently from the past repairing procedures that dealt only with the modification of the profile shift
coefficient. A computer program has been developed to automatically determine the repair alternatives under two goals: minimize the stock removal or maximize gear tooth strength.
A best practice in gear design is to limit the amount of backlash to a minimum value needed to accommodate
manufacturing tolerances, misalignments, and deflections, in order to prevent the non-driving side of the teeth to make contact and rattle. Industry standards, such as ANSI/AGMA 2002 and DIN3967, provide reference values of minimum backlash to be used in the gear design. However, increased customers' expectations in vehicle noise eduction have pushed backlash and allowable manufacturing tolerances to even lower limits. This is especially true in the truck market, where engines are quieter because they run at lower speeds to improve fuel economy, but they quite often run
at high torsional vibration levels. Furthermore, gear and shaft arrangements in truck transmissions have become more complex due to increased number of speeds and to improve efficiency. Determining the minimum amount of backlash is quite a challenge. This paper presents an investigation of minimum backlash values of helical gear teeth applied to a light-duty pickup truck transmission. An analytical model was developed to calculate backlash limits of each gear pair when not transmitting load, and thus susceptible to generate rattle noise, through different transmission power paths.
A statistical approach (Monte Carlo) was used since a significant number of factors affect backlash, such as tooth
thickness variation; center distance variation; lead; runout and pitch variations; bearing clearances; spline clearances; and shaft deflections and misalignments. Analytical results identified the critical gear pair, and power path, which was confirmed experimentally on a transmission. The approach presented in this paper can be useful to design gear pairs
with a minimum amount of backlash, to prevent double flank contact and to help reduce rattle noise to lowest levels.
under pressure from numerous
market forces. The oil sector's
decline, weakened global economies
(particularly China) and local government policies outnumber and outweigh relieving forces such as the FAST Act, leaving the industry in a general downturn. The outlook has yet to become truly grim, but companies are beginning to scale back.
With the ongoing push towards electric vehicles (EVs), there is likely to be increasing focus on the noise impact of the gearing required for the transmission of power from the (high-speed) electric motor to the road. Understanding automotive noise,
vibration and harshness (NVH) and methodologies for total in-vehicle noise presupposes relatively large, internal combustion (IC) contributions, compared to gear noise. Further, it may be advantageous to run the electric motors at significantly higher rotational speed than conventional automotive IC engines, sending geartrains into yet higher speed ranges. Thus the move to EV or hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) places greater or different demands on geartrain noise. This work combines both a traditional NVH approach (in-vehicle and rig noise, waterfall plots, Campbell diagrams and Fourier analysis) - with highly detailed transmission error measurement and simulation of the complete drivetrain - to fully understand noise sources
within an EV hub drive. A detailed methodology is presented, combining both a full series of tests and advanced simulation to troubleshoot and optimize an EV hub drive for noise reduction.
According to the U.K.-based WITT Energy website (witt-energy.com), "The WITT is the only device in the world that can capture energy from all movement and turn it into electricity. No other energy system can exploit the full spectrum of movement, enabling it to harvest power from water (sea, river or tidal),
wind and human or animal motion."
Plastic gears are everywhere
today - throughout your car, at
the oceans' lowest depths, in deep
space. The question, when is a
metal gear a candidate for plastic
conversion, can be addressed in
three words, i.e. what's the application?
Let's talk about large gears. Not the size or scope or inspection process, but the forecast and market potential in areas that utilize
these massive components. We'll examine key industry segments like energy and mining and tap IHS Economics for a forecast for 2016 and 2017 (spoiler alert: it's not great). Additionally, we'll discuss some of
the critical factors influencing global big gear manufacturers Ferry-Capitain and Hofmann Engineering.
“Highway vehicles release about
1.7 billion tons of greenhouse
gases (GHGs) into the atmosphere
each year — mostly in the form of
carbon dioxide (CO2) — contributing
to global climate change. The
CO2 emissions of a car are directly
proportional to the quantity of
fuel consumed by an engine. In 2013, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from transportation were second only to the electricity sector — an increase of about 16% since 1990.” (EPA.GOV).
Many years ago, when asked how the
five-meter gear was checked, the quality manager responded, “When they’re that big, they’re never bad!” That may have been the attitude and practice in the past, but it no longer serves the manufacturer nor the customer. Requirements have been evolving steadily, requiring gears to
perform better and last longer.
At the dawn of the Industrial
Revolution, so-called mechanics
were tasked with devising the precise methods that would make mass production possible. The result was the first generation of machine tools, which in turn required improved tooling and production methods.
The efficiency of a gearbox is the output energy divided by the input energy. It depends on a variety of factors. If the complete gearbox assembly in its operating environment is observed, then the following efficiency influencing factors
have to be considered
This presentation introduces a new procedure that - derived from exact calculations - aids in determining the parameters of the validation testing of spiral bevel and hypoid gears in single-reduction axles.
Recently, a new type of hob with carbide inserts has been introduced, providing higher cutting speeds, longer tool life and higher feed rates when compared to re-grindable, high-speed steel hobs. But with this kind of hob, new challenges occur due to positional errors of the cutting edges when mounted on the tool. These errors lead to manufacturing errors on the gear teeth which must be controlled. In this paper, the tooth quality of a gear manufactured by hobs with different quality classes is analyzed using a simulation model in combination with Monte Carlo methods.
Historically, wind turbine gearbox failures have plagued the industry. Yet an effective oil analysis program will
increase the reliability and availability of your machinery, while minimizing maintenance costs associated with oil change-outs, labor, repairs and downtime. Practical action steps are presented here to improve reliability.
In the summer of 1974, long before Argo, there was “AZORIAN” -- the
code name for a CIA gambit to recover cargo entombed in a sunken Soviet submarine -- the K-129 -- from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. The challenge: exhume -- intact -- a 2,000-ton submarine and its suspicious cargo from 17,000 feet of water.
Having outlasted the worldwide Great Recession, the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) forecasts a constant growth in wind energy, i.e.: "increase in worldwide capacity to 460,000 MW by 2015."
This work establishes a baseline for aerospace spur gear behavior under oil-off conditions. The collected test results document a different oil-off time, dictated by material used.
For metal replacement with powder metal (PM) of an automotive transmission, PM gear design differs from its wrought counterpart. Indeed, complete reverse-engineering and re-design is required so to better understand and document the performance parameters of solid-steel vs. PM gears. Presented here is a re-design (re-building a 6-speed manual transmission for an Opel Insignia 4-cylinder, turbocharged 2-liter engine delivering 220 hp/320 N-m) showing that substituting a different microgeometry of the PM gear teeth -- coupled with lower Young’s modulus -- theoretically enhances performance when compared to the solid-steel design.
Over the past few months we've talked with a lot of gear manufacturers. Many of them tell us business is strong, while others are struggling with reduced demand. The difference between them isn't so much in the quality of their manufacturing operations, but rather trends in the end markets they serve.
Market needs push in 2013, but will it get one? The construction/off-highway
industries have been here before. New equipment, technologies and innovations during an economic standstill that some have been dealing with since 2007.
This paper introduces mandatory improvements in design, manufacturing and inspection - from material elaboration to final machining - with special focus on today's large and powerful gearing.
Gearbox performance, reliability, total cost of ownership (energy cost), overall impact on the environment, and anticipation of additional future regulations are top-of-mind issues in the industry. Optimization of the bearing set can significantly improve gearbox performance.
By increasing the number of gears and the transmission-ratio spread, the engine will run with better fuel
efficiency and without loss of driving
dynamics. Transmission efficiency
itself can be improved by: using fuelefficient transmission oil; optimizing the lubrication systems and pumps; improving shifting strategies and optimizing gearings; and optimizing bearings and seals/gaskets.
The turbines are still spinning.
They’re spinning on large wind farms
in the Great Plains, offshore in the
Atlantic and even underwater where
strong tidal currents offer new energy
solutions. These turbines spin regularly
while politicians and policy makers—
tied up in discussions on tax incentives, economic recovery and a lot of finger pointing—sit idle. Much like the auto and aerospace industries of years past, renewable energy is coping with its own set of growing pains. Analysts still feel confident that clean energy will play a significant role in the future of manufacturing—it’s just not going to play the role envisioned four to five
years ago.
It’s a brave, new hardware-software world out there. Players in the worldwide gear industry who don’t have plenty of both run the risk of becoming irrelevant—sooner than later.
Gear flank breakage can be observed on edge zone-hardened gears. It occurs, for example, on bevel gears for water turbines, on spur gears for wind energy converters and on single- and double-helical gears for other industrial
applications.
In the August 2008 issue of Gear Technology, we ran a story (“Gearbox
Speed Reducer Helps Fan Technology for ‘Greener” Jet Fuel Efficiency’) on the
then ongoing, extremely challenging and protracted development of Pratt
& Whitney’s geared turbofan (GTF) jet engine.
This article describes some of the most important tests for prototypes conducted at Winergy AG during the product development process. It will demonstrate that the measurement results on the test rig for load distribution are in accordance with the turbine measurements.
This paper presents how low pressure carburizing and high pressure gas quenching processes are successfully applied on internal ring gears for a six-speed automatic transmission. The specific challenge in the heat treat process was to reduce distortion in such a way that subsequent machining operations are entirely eliminated.
We talked energy efficiency with some
major players in the lubricants industry—
but with a focus on their products’
impact regarding energy efficiency of
gears and gearboxes in wind turbines.
Gears with an asymmetric involute gear tooth form were analyzed to determine their bending and contact stresses
relative to symmetric involute gear tooth designs, which are representative of helicopter main-drive gears.
Faithful Gear Technology readers may recall that our July 2009 issue contained an update of the deliberations
provided by Bill Bradley. Now, almost two years later, there is an ISO/IEC wind turbine gearbox standard out for draft international standard ballot (ballot closes 2011-05-17).
Capitalizing on a burgeoning new
technology where gears are of great import, the gear community gathered en masse at the American Wind Energy
Association’s Windpower Expo 2010.
The global wind energy market has seen average growth rates of 28 percent over the last 10 years, according to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), creating major challenges for the component supply industry. GWEC also forecasts an average growth rate of 22 percent for the next five years, which if realized, will continue to put pressure on suppliers of turbine components.
Although typically considered a late bloomer in the call to wind energy arms, the United States is now the
number one wind power producer in the world with over 25,000 MW installed by the end of 2008, according to the Global Wind Energy Council in January 2009.
Getting rid of personal mementos is an arduous housekeeping ritual for some
of us; every last gear has a memory. One man’s trash is another man’s gold, after all, or in some cases, one failed business is a forgotten piece of personal and mechanical genealogy. Such is the case of the Hill-Climber chainless bicycle, the remains of which were pulled from a family junk pile after nearly half a century.
Beveloid gears are used to accommodate a small shaft angle. The manufacturing technology used for beveloid gearing
is a special setup of cylindrical gear cutting and grinding machines. A new development, the so-called Hypoloid
gearing, addresses the desire of gear manufacturers for more freedoms. Hypoloid gear sets can realize shaft angles between zero and 20° and at the same time, allow a second shaft angle (or an offset) in space that provides the freedom to connect two points in space.
A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method is adapted, validated and applied to spinning gear systems with emphasis on predicting windage losses.
Several spur gears and a disc are studied. The CFD simulations return good agreement with measured windage power loss.
Industrial gear standards have been used to support reliability through the specification of requirements for
design, manufacturing and verification.
The consensus development of an
international wind turbine gearbox
standard is an example where gear
products can be used in reliable
mechanical systems today. This has
been achieved through progressive
changes in gear technology, gear
design methods and the continual
development and refinement of gearbox
standards.
This article shows the newest developments to reduce overall cycle time in grinding wind power gears, including the use of both profile grinding and threaded wheel grinding.
The objective of this paper is to demonstrate that transmission gears
of rotary-wing aircraft, which are typically scrapped due to minor foreign
object damage (FOD) and grey staining, can be repaired and re-used with
signifi cant cost avoidance. The isotropic superfinishing (ISF) process is used to repair the gear by removing surface damage. It has been demonstrated
in this project that this surface damage can be removed while maintaining
OEM specifications on gear size, geometry and metallurgy. Further, scrap
CH-46 mix box spur pinions, repaired by the ISF process, were subjected to
gear tooth strength and durability testing, and their performance compared
with or exceeded that of new spur pinions procured from an approved
Navy vendor. This clearly demonstrates the feasibility of the repair and
re-use of precision transmission gears.
Natural resources—minerals, coal, oil, agricultural products, etc.—are the
blessings that Mother Earth confers upon the nations of the world. But it takes unnaturally large gears to extract them.
Big gears and wind turbines go together like bees and honey, peas and carrots, bread and butter and—well, you
get the idea. Wind isn’t just big right now, it’s huge. The wind industry means tremendous things for the energy dependent world we live in and especially big things for gear
manufacturers and other beleaguered American industries.
When gears are case-hardened, it is known that some growth and redistribution of stresses that result in geometric distortion will occur. Aerospace gears require post case-hardening grinding of the gear teeth to achieve necessary accuracy. Tempering of the case-hardened surface, commonly known as grinding burn, occurs in the manufacturing
process when control of the heat generation at the surface is lost.
It’s not too often a trade show so far
surpasses organizers’ expectations for
size that it must be relocated. This was just the dilemma the American Wind
Energy Association (AWEA) faced with the Windpower 2009 Conference and Exhibition, which was originally
scheduled to take place in Minneapolis,
but will now be held at McCormick
Place, Chicago.
This paper will present data from both laboratory and field testing demonstrating that superfinished components exhibit lower friction, operating temperature, wear and/
or higher horsepower, all of which translate directly into increased fuel economy.
Today’s ever-evolving global economic engine is, in many ways, a wonderful phenomenon; you know—a rising-tide-lifting-all-boats, trickle-down-theory-of-economics dynamic at work.
The United States’ long-held dream of energy independence—as in cheap, clean, free of overseas extortion and renewable energy—could very well be realized in part by the country-wide development of wind turbines...
Lamentations continue—legitimately so—over the second-citizen status of manufacturing in the United States. The need undoubtedly continues for renewed support by government and educators for making things here once again...
It seems that nothing can hold back the power of the wind—unless, of course, it's the availability of rugged, reliable, specially designed gearboxes. How Gleason is Keeping up with Demand.
Long before oil, climate change and energy demand were making headlines in Washington, Minnesota State Auditor Rebecca Otto and her husband installed a wind energy system on their property in Minnesota.
Above all, a gear is not just a mechanical transmission, but is developed to a system fulfilling multiple demands, such as clutch integration, selectable output speeds, and controls of highest electronic standards. This paper shows the basics for high-speed gear design and a selection of numerous applications in detailed design and operational needs.
When Belgium-based Hansen Transmissions was under the ownership of Invensys plc in the late 1990s, the parent company was dropping not-so-subtle hints that the industrial gearbox manufacturer was not part of its long-term plans. Yet Hansen’s CEO Ivan Brems never dreamed that, less than a decade later, he would be working for an Indian company.
An experimental effort has been conducted on an aerospace-quality helical gear train to investigate the thermal behavior of the gear system as many important operational conditions were varied.
A gearbox that absorbs 30 percent of external forces, transmits power from two engines operating at different speeds, and uses gears that meet several design and specification standards at the same time...
Dana Corp. is developing a process that carburizes a straight bevel gear to a carbon content of 0.8% in 60 fewer minutes than atmosphere carburizing did with an identical straight bevel.
Aerospace manufacturing has seen quite a turnaround in the past few years. The world's manufacturers of airplanes, helicopters, missiles, space vehicles and satellites are all extremely busy right now--and that's keeping quite a few gear manufacturers busy as well.
"An industrial business with a very important growth potential for the next decade." That's the wind energy as described by Ivan Brems of gear manufacturer Hansen Transmissions International.
This article reviews mathematical models for individual components associated with power losses, such as windage, churning, sliding and rolling friction losses.
Companies around the world are learning to embrace the environment, and the gear industry is no exception. This special section takes a look at how some gear manufacturers are doing
their part to conserve resources, preserve and protect the environment, and give back to the land. What we’ve found is that adopting environmental
measures is far more than just good
corporate citizenship. For many gear industry companies, good environmental practices also turn out to be good for the bottom line.
Recent breakthroughs in profile grinding software are helping Anderson Precision Gears and others meet wind power’s insatiable appetite for faster
production of large, high-quality gears.
The seemingly simple process of placing a uniform chamfer on the face ends of spur and helical gears, at least for the aerospace industry, has never been a satisfactory or cost effective process.
This paper reviews the necessity for detailed specification, design and manufacture to achieve required performance in service. The precise definition of duty rating and a thorough understanding of the environmental conditions, whether it is in a marine or industrial application, is required to predict reliable performance of a gearbox through its service life. A case study relating to complex marine gears and other general practice is presented to review the techniques used by Allen Gears to design and develop a gearbox that integrates with the requirements of the whole machinery installation. Allen Gears has considerable experience in the design of a variety of industrial and marine gears(Ref. 1,2).
Carbon steels have primarily been used to manufacture aerospace gears due to the steels' mechanical characteristics. An alloyed low carbon steel is easily case-hardened to obtain a hard wear surface while maintaining the ductile core characteristics. The microstructure achieved will accept the heavy loading, shocks, and elevated temperatures that gears typically experience in applications. The carbon steel machinability allows for general machining practices to be employed when producing aerospace gears versus the more advanced metal removal processes required by stainless and nickel-based alloys.
If you think of Gear Expo as only a machine tool show, you're not seeing all of its potential. You may be tempted to skip it this year, especially if you're struggling to fill your current capacity. I've heard too many stories of canceled orders, falling profits and slashed budgets to believe that great numbers of you will be attending Gear Expo with buying new machines as your No. 1 priority.
Increased productivity in roughing operations for gear cutting depends mainly on lower production costs in the hobbing process. In addition, certain gears can be manufactured by shaping, which also needs to be taken into account in the search for a more cost-effective form of production.
An analysis of possibilities for the selection of tool geometry parameters was made in order to reduce tooth profile errors during the grinding of gears by different methods. The selection of parameters was based on the analysis of he grid diagram of a gear and a rack. Some formulas and graphs are presented for the selection of the pressure angle, module and addendum of the rack-tool. The results from the grinding experimental gears confirm the theoretical analysis.
The wind turbine industry has been plagued with gearbox failures, which cause repair costs, legal expenses, lost energy production and environmental pollution.
A major source of helicopter cabin noise (which has been measured at over 100 decibels sound pressure level) is the gearbox. Reduction of this noise is a NASA and U.S. Army goal. A requirement for the Army/NASA Advanced Rotorcraft Transmission project was a 10 dB noise reduction compared to current designs.
I sat down to write this editorial about my father, Harold Goldstein, as he approached his 80th birthday in October. I had meant it to be a celebration of his nearly 65 years in the machine tool business. Unfortunately, on August 26, as I was working on it, my father passed away after a long battle with emphysema. This editorial has now become a memorial as well as a celebration.
A major source of helicopter cabin noise (which has been measured at over 100 decibels sound pressure level) is the gear box. Reduction of this noise is a NASA and U.S. Army goal.
The type of lubricant and the method of applying it to the tooth flanks of large open gears is very important from the point of view of lubrication technology and maintenance. When selecting the type of lubricant and the application method, it is important to check whether it is possible to feed the required lubricant quantity to the load-carrying tooth flanks, This is necessary to avoid deficient lubrication, damage to the gear and operational malfunctions. It is important to determine the type of lubricant, which may be fluid or grease-like. The consistency of the lubricant will have a direct impact on the ability of the lubrication system to feed adequately the lubricant to the gear. The interactions between the common types of lubricant and the lubrication application methods for open gear drives are shown in Fig. 1.
You've been reading about it, talking about it, maybe even trying it. Gear Technology has jumped aboard it feet first and begun a voyage on the World Wide Web. Beginning with this issue, an electronic version of the magazine will be online. For those of us who still find the fax machine amazing technology, this is a great leap.
Ready or not, QS-9000 is here. If you are a first-tier supplier to one of the Big Three automotive companies, you've already heard that compliance with this new quality standard is now an entry-level requirement for doing business with Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. If you're a second-or third-tier supplier, you can expect the ripple effect of this new standard to hit your company one way or another.
Many people in the gear industry have heard of skiving, a process wherein solid carbide or inserted carbide blade hobs with 15 - 60 degrees of negative rake are used to recut gears to 62 Rc. The topic of this article is the use of neutral (zero) rake solid carbide hobs to remove heat treat distortion, achieving accuracies of AGMA 8 to AGMA 14, DIN 10-5 and improving surface finish on gears from 8 DP - 96 DP (.3 module - .26 m.).
Gear Expo '93 - another trade show, another plea to send people and/or equipment out of town, away from the office or plant. Another bid to spend time, money, and effort. Oh, please! Hasn't anybody heard that these are the "lean and mean" '90s?
Could the tip chamfer that manufacturing people usually use on the tips of gear teeth be the cause of vibration in the gear set? The set in question is spur, of 2.25 DP, with 20 degrees pressure angle. The pinion has 14 teeth and the mating gear, 63 teeth. The pinion turns at 535 rpm maximum. Could a chamfer a little over 1/64" cause a vibration problem?
Durability is the most important criterion used to define the quality of a gear. The freezing of metals has been acknowledged for almost thirty years as an effective method for increasing durability, or "wear life," and decreasing residual stress in tool steels. The recent field of deep cryogenics (below -300 degrees F) has brought us high temperature superconductors, the superconducting super collider, cryo-biology, and magnotehydrodynamic drive systems. It has also brought many additional durability benefits to metals.
An analytical method is presented to predict the shifts of the contact ellipses on spiral bevel gear teeth under load. The contact ellipse shift is the motion of the point to its location under load. The shifts are due to the elastic motions of the gear and pinion supporting shafts and bearings. The calculations include the elastic deflections of the gear shafts and the deflections of the four shaft bearings. The method assumes that the surface curvature of each tooth is constant near the unloaded pitch point. Results from these calculations will help designers reduce transmission weight without seriously reducing transmission performance.
The acceptance by discerning customers of passenger cars is dependent upon both the actual noise lever and the subjective noise character.
The subjective noise character itself can contain, among other features, undesirable noise phenomena which become apparent at certain points in the vehicle operating range. One such critical phenomenon is gear rattle, which is mainly present under low speed, high load conditions. Due to changes in the angular velocity of the crankshaft, gear rattle under driving conditions occurs at the unloaded gears and splines.
The purpose of gear inspection is to:
Assure required accuracy and quality,
Lower overall cost of manufacture by controlling rejects and scrap,
Control machines and machining practices and maintain produced accuracy as machines and tools wear,
Determine hear treat distortions to make necessary corrections.
The design of any gearing system is a difficult, multifaceted process. When the system includes bevel gearing, the process is further complicated by the complex nature of the bevel gears themselves. In most cases, the design is based on an evaluation of the ratio required for the gear set, the overall envelope geometry, and the calculation of bending and contact stresses for the gear set to determine its load capacity. There are, however, a great many other parameters which must be addressed if the resultant gear system is to be truly optimum.
A considerable body of data related to the optimal design of bevel gears has been developed by the aerospace gear design community in general and by the helicopter community in particular. This article provides a summary of just a few design guidelines based on these data in an effort to provide some guidance in the design of bevel gearing so that maximum capacity may be obtained. The following factors, which may not normally be considered in the usual design practice, are presented and discussed in outline form:
Integrated gear/shaft/bearing systems
Effects of rim thickness on gear tooth stresses
Resonant response
Dear Editor:
In Mr. Yefim Kotlyar's article "Reverse Engineering" in the July/August issue, I found an error in the formula used to calculate the ACL = Actual lead from the ASL = Assumed lead.
Spur gear endurance tests were conducted to investigate the surface pitting fatigue life of noninvolute gears with low numbers of teeth and low contact ratios for the use in advanced application. The results were compared with those for a standard involute design with a low number of teeth. The gear pitch diameter was 8.89 cm (3.50 in.) with 12 teeth on both gear designs. Test conditions were an oil inlet temperature of 320 K (116 degrees F), a maximum Hertz stress of 1.49 GPa (216 ksi), and a speed of 10,000 rpm. The following results were obtained: The noninvolute gear had a surface pitting fatigue life approximately 1.6 times that of the standard involute gear of a similar design. The surface pitting fatigue life of the 3.43-pitch AISI 8620 noninvolute gear was approximately equal to the surface pitting fatigue life of an 8-pitch, 28-tooth AISI 9310 gear at the same load, but at a considerably higher maximum Hertz stress.
This article presents an efficient and direct method for the synthesis of compound planetary differential gear trains for the generation of specified multiple speed ratios. It is a train-value method that utilizes the train values of the integrated train components of the systems to form design equations which are solved for the tooth numbers of the gears, the number of mating gear sets and the number of external contacts in the system. Application examples, including vehicle differential transmission units, rear-end differentials with unit and fractional speed ratios, multi-input functions generators and robot wrist joints are given.
One of the hot items on the public agenda these days is "The Environment." Suddenly everyone wants to save the whales and the rain forest. Politicians, rock stars, and big business have all discovered that you can't get anything but good press for saying that you're in favor of trees and marine mammals.
March 19-22, 1989. First International Applied Mechanical Systems Design Conference. Convention Center, Nashville, TN.
April 25-27, 1989. ASME 5th Annual Power Transmission & Gearing Conference, Chicago, IL
Involute spur gears are very sensitive to gear misalignment. Misalignment will cause the shift of the bearing contact toward the edge of the gear tooth surfaces and transmission errors that increase gear noise. Many efforts have been made to improve the bearing contact of misaligned spur gears by crowning the pinion tooth surface. Wildhaber(1) had proposed various methods of crowning that can be achieved in the process of gear generation. Maag engineers have used crowning for making longitudinal corrections (Fig. 1a); modifying involute tooth profile uniformly across the face width (Fig. 1b); combining these two functions in Fig. 1c and performing topological modification (Fig. 1d) that can provide any deviation of the crowned tooth surface from a regular involute surface. (2)
Today it is common practice when
climb hobbing to keep the direction of
the hob thread the same as that of the
helical gear. The same generalization
holds true for the mass production of
gears for automobiles. It is the authors' opinion, however, that conventional hobbing with a reverse-handed hob is more effective for the high-speed manufacture of comparatively small module gears for automobiles. The authors have proven both experimentally and theoretically that reverse-handed conventional hobbing, using a multi-thread hob with a smaller diameter is very effective for lengthening the life of the hob and for increasing cutting efficiency at high speeds.
Curvic Couplings were first introduced in 1942 to meet the need for permanent couplings and releasing couplings (clutches), requiring extreme accuracy and maximum load carrying capacity, together with a fast rate of production. The development of the Curvic Coupling stems directly from the manufacture of Zerol and spiral bevel gears since it is made on basically similar machines and also uses similar production methods. The Curvic Coupling can therefore lay claim to the same production advantages and high precision associated with bevel gears.
Sub: 'Finding Tooth Ratios' article published in Nov/Dec 1985 issue
Let us congratulate you and Orthwein, W.C. for publishing this superb article in Gear Technology Journal. We liked the article very much and wish to impliment it in our regular practice.
Selection of the number of teeth for each gear in a gear train such that the output to input angular velocity ratio is a specified value is a problem considered by relatively few published works on gear design.
