Spotlight feature: Gearbody deflection and integrated FE solver

The 2021.1 release from Ricardo Software is now available to download. Customers can benefit from a wide range of new features and enhancements that will further help to improve accuracy, whilst reducing time spent on development.

We caught up with our Product Managers to deep-dive into some of the biggest enhancements and new features. Keep an eye on the blog for the next in the series!

Name: David Parkin-Moore
Job title: Senior Product Manager Transmission Applications
Product: SABR
Spotlight Feature: Gearbody deflection and integrated FE solver

Q1: Tell us more about the new feature

This new feature gives the user the ability to generate their own gearbody shape, analyse it and assess the effect on the misalignments. It is so fast that users can target the shape to minimise misalignment, way before creating any CAD models.

Q2: Why did Ricardo Software decide to include this functionality?

Gearbody deflection is very important for misalignment of gears, it can be more significant than the deflection of the shafts, bearings and casings. This analysis has been included in our process for many years, but the use of external tools made it less time effective and requires CAD models, FE meshing, separate FE solvers etc. The new functionality brings the control to the transmission designer in one place and drives the design from early concept. Not taking gearbody deflection into account will give incorrect misalignments at the gear mesh and the development of the micro-geometry will have to rely on expensive and very time-consuming physical contact marking tests which can be too late in a development program.

Q3: How will customers benefit from this new feature?

The speed of this process is remarkable. Creating the gearbody shape and resulting FE mesh takes less than a minute and typically the analysis is carried out in seconds. The designer can assess the results of a design within a minute and modify. This will improve productivity significantly. The module cost for the integrated FE solver is so low, it will pay for itself in time saved, very rapidly

Q4: What makes this new functionality so good?

Put simply, control of the design is at the user's fingertips. And it's fast!

Q5: Any plans for further development in the future?

This is our first inclusion of our FE solver within the SABR environment. It has opened the door to implementing more FE related analysis within the quasi-static transmission analysis realm - watch this space!

Q6: How can our customers access the functionality and start enjoying the benefits?

The gearbody editor is already included in the base package. The integrated FE solver is available as an affordable module and we can offer a temporary licence so customer can see for themselves how rapid it is to use.

Customers can use the gearbody editor to generate Abaqus models to run, but the speed and cost advantage of using the integrated solver will be very evident immediately.

Customers can find out more about the updates available in SABR as part of the latest release by visiting the customer portal.