A STATIC ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE HELICAL GEARS USING A 3-DIMENSIONAL FINITE-ELEMENT METHOD

Conventional (steel-like) material helical gears can be replaced by he lical gears made of composite materials. This results in light-weight helical gears, which add to the existing list of advantages of helical gears, such as smooth and silent operation and larger load carrying c apacity, while at the same time maintaining higher strengths, which is an important requirement in applications like spacecraft and aircraft . In the present work, the performance of Kevlar/epoxy and graphite/ep oxy material helical gears has been compared with that of carbon steel helical gears using a three-dimensional finite element method. From t he present it may be concluded that composite material helical gears b ehave similarly to carbon steel helical gears and graphite/epoxy helic al gear behaviour is very close to that of carbon steel helical gears, except for the slightly larger displacements at the tip. The safety f actor obtained based on the root stress values for the two orthotropic material helical gears is very favourable.