Development of a Design System for Multi-Stage Gear Drives(1st Report: Proposal of Formal Processes for Dimensional Design)

Abstract

In recent years, the concern of designing multi-stage gear drives has increased with more application of them in high-speed and high-load. Until now, however, the researches on the design of gear drives have been focused on single gear pairs. Thus, the design practice for multi-stage gear drives has been depended on experiences and expertise of designers and carried out commonly by trial and error. We propose an automation algorithm for the design of two- and three-stage cylindrical gear drives. The two types of dimensional design processes have been proposed to determine gear dimensions in a formal way. The first design process (Process I) uses the total volume of gears to determine gear ratio, and uses K factor, unit load, and aspect ratio to determine gear dimensions. The second one (Process II) makes use of Niemann's formula and center distance to calculate gear ratio and gear dimensions. Process I and Process II employ material data from AGMA and ISO standards, respectively. The configuration design determines the positions of gears with minimizing the volume of gearbox by using a simulated annealing algorithm. The availability of the design algorithm is validated by the design examples of two- and three-stage gear drives.