Conceptual design of a gear with radially movable teeth

Abstract

In this article, designing of an internal gear with radially movable teeth has been presented considering minimum slide in contact. The mechanism operates in a way that changes sliding between teeth contacts into rolling. This aspect has been made possible by the movement of teeth components in the radial direction. With sliding of teeth in their guides, the power transmission can be controlled by either a mechanical or a hydraulic system. In this work, a mechanical system based on a camshaft has been used. The mechanism of the novel gear can decrease the stress in contact points due to minimum wear; besides, it has the possibility to use teeth being different from the usual profiles such as cycloid, involute, circular-arc and cosine. Moreover, reducing frictional contact clutches by using this novel gear drive in vehicle gearbox is desired which makes them smaller, lighter and more efficient. The design of components, dimensions and tolerances has been optimized with respect to the availability of facilities and ease of manufacturing. Capabilities and standard part of CATIA software are used for more accurate modeling. The operation has been evaluated theoretically revealing interesting results.