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Three main concerns are in the focus of the development of geared transmissions nowadays: load carrying capacity, noise-vibration-harshness (NVH) behavior, and efficiency. Increasing the efficiency of modern gearboxes contributes significantly to the reduction of energy consumption and the saving of resources. Gearboxes are frequently designed conservatively with an oversupply of oil to guarantee operational reliability. An oversupply of oil results in an unnecessarily high amount of oil kept in motion and to high no-load losses. Detailed information on the oil distribution in the early design stages of gearboxes would help to optimize the lubrication and to increase the efficiency. Thereby, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) methods offer a very flexible way to visualize the oil flow inside gearboxes with much fewer restrictions compared to measurements with transparent gearbox designs. In this study, a verified CFD model based on the finite volume method is used to investigate the oil flow in a single-stage gearbox. Different oil viscosities and circumferential speeds are considered. The investigations focus on the oil flow. The gear churning loss, as part of the no-load loss, is additionally considered. Experimental validation is obtained by high-speed camera recordings and measurements at the FZG no-load power loss test rig. The results show very strong agreement between simulation and measurement. The results show that CFD simulations can visualize the oil flow behavior with a very high degree of detail.

Efficiency is becoming a main concern in the design of power transmissions. It is therefore important, especially during the design phase, to have appropriate models to predict the power losses. For this reason, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulations were performed in order to understand the influence of geometrical and operating parameters on the losses in power transmissions. The results of the model were validated with experimental results.