A holistic approach to lightweight design of multi-component gearwheels

Multi-component gearwheels consist of a gear ring, that carries the teeth and a wheel body, that connects gear ring and shaft. Both parts are joined by a press fit after the gear ring's heat treatment, what offers the possibility to choose a lightweight design for the wheel body independently from the gear ring. This paper focuses on a wheel body made by fine blanked sheet metal layers, which are stacked on top of each other until the gear ring width is reached. The manufacturing method influences the gearwheels overall behavior, as fine blanked edges are not rectangular. Lightweight design of the wheel body is a main objective. Again, this influences the gearwheel behavior, as the stiffness of the wheel body changes. To meet the lightweight objective while still fulfilling the mechanical needs of a gearwheel, a holistic development approach is used. In every step of that development process, it is checked, if a design proposal matches the mentioned requirements. The experiments show promising results for the further development of multi-component gearwheels.