Hydraulic losses of a gearbox: CFD analysis and experiments

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. •We investigate the oil-windage power losses.•We apply CFD to calculate the load independent power losses.•2 meshing gears are modeled together in an oil bath.•We investigate the influence of the tip diameter, the helix angle and the width.•We validate the model by experimental tests.