Increasing transmission efficiency by implementation of a conformal cooling system using additive manufacturing

Additive manufacturing, especially SLM, provides a suitable technology for manufacturing complex parts. This enables innovative product design for resource efficiency and effectiveness via light weight design or functional integration. Employing this potential, the presented project focuses on increasing transmission efficiency of a gear wheel by reducing load-independent power losses induced by the cooling lubricant. The cooling and lubrication system is improved by implementing internal conformal cooling channels via additive manufacturing. This way a volume reduction of the lubricant is pursued resulting in greatly diminished oil churning, windage, and squeezing losses. As a consequence, overall transmission efficiency can be increased by employing an innovative functional gear wheel design. Likewise, SLM is qualified as an innovative manufacturing technology for the production of gear wheels offering a great potential for further optimization of gear wheel design with regard to resource efficiency, lightweight design, and thermo-mechanical load adaption by functional integration.