Investigations on noise emission from functionally graded materials based polymer spur gears

Abstract

There is tremendous growth in the polymer gearing field. Polymer gears have replaced the metal gears in various fields. Polymer gears are now used for low, medium, and even for high power transmission systems, especially in automotive engineering. Noise emission from polymer gears is much less than metal gears in an application. In the present work, homogeneous and functionally graded materials (FGMs) gears are fabricated by glass fiber reinforced high-density polyethylene (HDPE) material via traditional and centrifugal casting techniques, respectively. Gears are manufactured by HDPE granules reinforced with fifteen weight percent and thirty weight percent of glass fibers. The focus of this experimental study is to examine the noise generation from the fabricated gears during the operation. Fabricated gears are run for 2 lakh cycles at different speeds and torque. The value of torque and speed are chosen within the range of 0.8–2.6 Nm and 500–1400 rpm, respectively. Experiments are performed on the polymer gear test rig. Noise emission from fabricated polymer gears is investigated for various running combinations of torque and speed.