Week 8 Worm Gear Challenge

Obejective: To perform transient structural analysis on worm and ring gear assembly to evaluate the stress generated due to worm gear's rotation.

Model:

Connections:

Connection	Connection type	Parts	Type
Joint	Body to ground	ring gear	revolute
Joint	Body to ground	worm gear	revolute
Contact	Frictionless	ring and worm	-

Mesh :

Adaptive sizing : Yes

Element size : 5mm

Element order : Quadratic [ REASON: To get accurate results. Changing the element type to quadratic increases the processing time but so does the accuracy. Being limited by the number of elements in student version this is one way to get better results.]

Meshed Model:

Results: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G-tZ_6Crf3PTt_N7GnCfEy-xxfVFaaFY/view?usp=sharing

Snapshots:

Von Mises stress :

Equivalent strain:

Inference :

When the worm gear rotates the teeth of the ring gear are caught up in it's grooves. They have to follow the grooves due to boundary conditions / constraints. The teeth thus experience a force from the worm gear. This force induces stress. In this simulation the contact between worm gear and ring gear is frictionless. If we increase the friction, stress is bound to increase too.