Design of bevel gears using accelerated particle swarm optimization technique

Straight bevel gears are simple type of bevel gears with their teeth being straight and tapered. They transmit power between shafts which are perpendicular with each other. In various applications of bevel gears, the issue of minimization of volume of gears is of immense importance for the designers, since it leads to reduced power consumption and material requirement for manufacturing. In this study, Accelerated Particle Swarm Optimization (APSO) is used to minimize the volume of straight bevel gears and optimized design variables are obtained. The design variables employed in the optimization procedure are module, face width and number of teeth. A design problem is considered for design optimization of bevel gear using APSO and obtained results are compared with the results produced by genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing (SA) from previous literature. Obtained results show that there is improvement in the volume attained using APSO.