Experimental Study of the Lubricant Flow around the Mesh-Ending Region Simulated in Water Using a Helical Gear Pair

概要

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the 3-D flow of lubricants around the mesh-ending region of a rotating helical gear pair. It has been revealed that there are air-flows around the meshing region, so effective lubrication should be considered with the flow, especially in severe condition of the transmission by gears, such as a high circumferential velocity or wider tooth width. In this paper, a simulating experiment is introduced, in which an acrylic helical gear pair is immersed into the water, and driven. This experiment makes phenomena slower than actual lubrication in the air, so observations become easier. Stainless particles are injected into the mesh-ending region like lubricants against meshing direction, and suspended sparsely in the water. The motions of the particles are captured by a high-speed camera. The camera is located to be able to look into the space between the teeth. Optical astigmatism is introduced intentionally into the system for the observation with the high-speed camera. With this optical system, distorted elliptic images of the particles are observed when the particles are out of focus. Numerical procedure is investigated to evaluate the positions of the particles along the optical axis from the distorted particle image. The tracings of the particles injected from various nozzle positions are shown in this paper, and hitting locations of the particles on the tooth surfaces are found out as lubricated region.