The application of CFD to model windage power loss from a spiral bevel gear

Abstract

In some aero-engine applications a spiral bevel gear is mounted in a bearing chamber. The bearings and gears create a highly rotating, turbulent and chaotic flow field within the chamber. In this paper a single-phase computational study of the flow around a spiral bevel gear is presented and the data is compared to available experimental data. Results are presented for clockwise and anticlockwise rotation for both unshrouded and shrouded configurations. Reasonable agreement of the computational data with the experimental data is obtained. Moment coefficients show the same trends in behaviour for clockwise and anticlockwise rotation although numerical agreement is not ideal with a difference of up to 27%, in the unshrouded case. For the shrouded configuration, static pressure profiles along the shroud are compared to experimental data, and these show good agreement although in the worst case there is 23% difference between computational and experimental values. The effect of different computational wall treatments is presented. Copyright © 2007 by ASME.