Numerical Visualization of Grease Flow in a Gearbox

Abstract Lubricating greases are widely used in e.g. open gear drives and gearboxes with difficult sealing conditions. The efficiency heat balance of grease-lubricated depend strongly on the lubrication mechanisms channeling circulating, for which grease flow is causal. computational fluid dynamics opens up possibility to visualize understand more detail. In this study, a single-stage gearbox lubricated an NLGI 1-2 was modeled by finite-volume method numerically investigate flow. Results show that rotating gears influence sump only locally around gears. For low fill volume, rotation separated from sump. high pronounced gear-grease interaction results circulating simulated distributions good accordance high-speed camera recordings.