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Low-loss gears are an interesting design approach for increasing the efficiency and thermal load limits of gearboxes. The loss-optimized gear geometry concentrates sliding around the pitch point, which results in low load-dependent gear power losses. In this study, a method for modeling transient EHL (elastohydrodynamically lubricated) contacts in gear mesh considering mixed lubrication and thermal effects is introduced and applied to analyze the tribological behavior of a low-loss gear geometry. Special focus is placed on local frictional losses to analyze the role of the thermal effects of the gear mesh. Although a thermal reduction in fluid friction is observed, the overall effect on total frictional losses of the low-loss gear geometry is evaluated to be very small. The edge geometry strongly influences the lubricant film thickness and frictional power losses.
Farrenkopf et al. (Wed,) studied this question.