Multidisciplinary Optimization during Gear Design

1. Abstract The realistic investigation of the real behavior of the most important machine elements (gears, flexible drives, clutches, rolling and hydrodynamic bearings, etc) needs the application of several disciplines during the analysis process (contact mechanics, elasticity, fluid flow, heat exchange, noise propagation, for mechatronic elements the consideration of the effects of magnetic field or electricity could be also important). This fact gives the multidisciplinarity of the analysis process for machine elements. This multidisciplinary analysis process is used for checking several criteria or for the evaluation of the objective function(s) during the optimization of these elements. This way the optimization procedure of the most important machine elements develops into a multidisciplinary optimization process, which needs faster and more efficient tools of optimization and analysis, comparing to a conventional optimization process. In a previous paper (which could be treated as the first part of a series of papers concerning multidisciplinary optimization of machine elements), was shown the necessity and general basis of the multidisciplinary optimization of machine elements, giving many possible disciplines which could be integrated into a multidisciplinary optimization process. In this first paper only a very simple example was shown for the gears. In this paper a more general way is applied for the gears description and the optimization problem helical and profile modified gears is solved and presented. The results of this more general optimization procedure could be useful for practical gear designers in the improvement and development of gears.