Exploration on Wear Characteristics: Performance of Gears of Polyamide66

Abstract

Gears of polymers are extensively preferred in low loads beyond metal gears on account of their ingrained properties like lightweight, lowly noise, self-lubrication and so on. Since, polymer gears are associated with the number of limitations like their use up to a very limited torques and lesser sustainability towards higher temperatures; these gears have the scope of important exploring research topics. For the use of polymers in gearing applications, investigators are exploring materials of high-strength and high-temperature resistance. The present work exhibits the use of Polyamide66 polymer with glass fibre reinforcement for making gears. It was, therefore, using injection moulding three categories of Polyamide66 gears were fabricated. These gears are designated as NPA66G, H15PA66G and H30PA66G having glass fibre contents by weight as 0, 15 and 30% one by one. The different gear pairs and the different torque levels were applied and the specific wear rates of driver as well as driven gears were determined. Accordingly, the polymer gear test rig was used and the experiments were carried out. The guidelines were applied for the design of experiment and accordingly factorial method is enforced. Through ANOVA, the results of experiments were investigated. The different gear pairs were also investigated analytically. The morphology was studied of the polymer gears, the most and the least touched. This was established that the polymer gears having higher fibre contents had the least affectedness and the high wear was detected at higher torque levels. Adhesion phenomenon recompenses for complete weight loss for the gear designated as H30PA66G.