Experimental and Numerical Study of a Loaded Cylindrical Glass Fibre Reinforced PA6 Gear
Résumé
Polymer gears replace metal ones in many motion and light power transmission applications. In order to improve the gears’ performance, glass fibre is added, where their lower cost and higher strength, offers a potential increase in the gears’ performance. This paper presents a numerical method to predict the mechanical and thermal behaviour of fibre reinforced plastic cylindrical gears and its experimental validation. The numerical method uses a viscoelastic model in its linear domain depending on temperature, humidity, rotational speed and fibre orientation. This numerical simulation computes the load sharing between instantaneously engaged gears and provides results such as contact pressure, tooth root stress or transmission error. The numerical results are then compared to experimental measures on a test bench developed at the LaMCoS laboratory. This comparison allows the validation of the load sharing model.