THE INFLUENCE OF LUBRICANT VISCOSITY ON THE EFFICIENCY AND POWER LOSS OF THE WORM GEAR

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental analysis of the influence of lubricant viscosity on the efficiency and power loss of a worm gear transmission. The tests were performed on the open circuit power specialized testing device AT200 at the Center for testing power transmissions at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Kragujevac. In the experiment, three oils of different viscosities were used: 220 mm2 ⁄s, 460 mm2⁄s and 680 mm2 ⁄s. The efficiency was measured for three different values of input number of rotations: 1500 min-1 , 2000 min-1 and 2500 min-1. Output torque values range from 2.2 Nm to 6Nm. The test results showed that the efficiency of worm gear increases with increasing input shaft speed. It was also observed that the efficiency increases with increasing oil viscosity in all test regimes. The results of the work are a reference for researching the efficiency of worm gears and engineering optimization, which is of great importance for the development of gears