Analysis and optimisation of windage power loss of high-speed cylindrical helical gear pair
LIU Zehao
KANG Min
FEI Xiuguo
LIU Wei
Abstract：[Objective]To investigate the windage power loss of the driving gear in a helical cylindrical gearbox under the working conditions of 1 500-2 500 r/min without a shroud and with different shroud parameters at 2 000 r/min,the nephograms of velocity and turbulent kinetic energy inside the gearbox were analyzed.[Methods]Based on computational fluid dynamics(CFD)method,a simplified model of a high-speed helical cylindrical gearbox was established.The RNG k-ε turbulence model was adopted,and the gear boundary was driven by a user-defined function(UDF)to control the rotational speed and direction of the gear pair.The dynamic mesh model was used to dynamically modify the mesh structure in the computational domain for simulating actual working conditions.[Results]The results show that the gear rotational speed has a significant impact on windage power loss.The gear shroud can effectively reduce the windage power loss of high-speed helical cylindrical gears,and the smaller the radial and axial clearances,the more remarkable the optimisation effect.However,for helical cylindrical gear pairs,excessively small clearances may aggravate the flow field motion in the meshing area,thereby increasing the windage power loss.This study provides reference for the design of shrouds in engineering applications.
Keywords：Windage power lossCylindrical helical gear pairComputational fluid dynamicsWindshield
Publication Date：2025-09-15
Online Publishing Date：2026-09-12(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：8( 85-92 )