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Ut Cti 2018
Ut Cti 2018
Ut Cti 2018
ABSTRACT
Ultimate Transmissions (UT) has developed a suite of inventive enabling technologies that
together, allow the design of the various forms of the UT “Silk Drive”. The Silk Drive is
fundamentally a traction based planetary drive. It allows a single stage transmission ratio up to
15 and is ideal for applications up to 30 000 rpm. For a typical automotive application with an
input torque up to 400 Nm it occupies a volume of 240 mm diameter by 120 mm long with a 19
kg mass. Its coaxial form suits close coupling to a similar diameter electric motor. It will
generate a similar amount of noise and vibration to a roller bearing of similar size. The Silk
Drive may be used as a speed reducer between a high speed motor and traditional downstream
transmission components. Alternatively it may be used to enable the development of novel drive
train architectures. The Silk Drive uses three or more sets of twin rollers between the central
“sun” and the outer “ring”. The outer roller is a “wedging” roller that causes the development of
the high normal or “clamping” forces that are necessary to allow transfer of the traction forces
across the traction contacts. This basic form is not innovative. UT has taken this basic form and
developed new technologies to solve the problem that is inherent to all “wedging” based traction
drives – namely lack of control of the magnitude of the clamping forces resulting from high
elastic deformations that are inherent to the system.
Ntraction
Gear pitch circle diameters
= Traction roller diameters
Ntooth
Before looking at details of the Silk Drive it is instructive to consider a comparison of the face
width required for a toothed transmission as compared to that for a traction transmission. For
the purposes of making this comparison the following assumptions are made;
• The Hertzian contact stress is taken to be the only design determinant for both the
geared and traction transmissions
• The maximum contact stresses for the toothed and traction transmissions are taken as 2
GPa and 4 GPa. These values are intended to be consistent with the Gear Code ISO
6336 and the Rolling Bearing Code ISO 281.
Subject to the above assumptions and for any value of the torque transferred, the normal forces
at the contact point for the traction and toothed drives, Ntraction and Ntooth are related as;
Ntraction = (1/0.08) cos 25o x Ntooth = 11.3 Ntooth
And rtooth = rtraction sin25 o = 0.42 rtraction
With rtooth and rtraction being the radii of curvature at the point of contact
By consideration of the mathematics of Hertzian contact for a line contact between two
cylindrical surfaces (that is equally applicable to the toothed and traction drives), it may be
established that;
Traction contact length = 11.3 x 0.42 / ((4GPa/2GPa)2) Toothed contact length
= 1.2 x Toothed contact length (1)
The simplicity of this comparison and its dependence on the stated assumptions is
acknowledged. Despite this it is considered that the relationship of equation (1) is a rational
indicator of the potential relative size of a toothed and a traction transmission. It is further
acknowledged that no traction drive prior to the Silk Drive has been able to approach the
potential expressed by equation (1). The Silk Drive designed by Ultimate Transmissions does
deliver a planetary transmission with a contact length around 20% greater than that of an
equivalent optimally designed toothed planetary transmission. Such a transmission has the
following qualitative advantages;
• Ability to operate at high speed
• Very low noise and vibration levels
• Simple component geometry (cylinders and rings) compared to toothed components and
resulting reduced costs
• Similar size and weight to a geared equivalent
For a “traction coefficient” of 0.08 as discussed in the previous section, the angle φ1 of Figure 2
must be 9.15o. This angle may be achieved by suitable choice of the wedge roller radius (with a
smaller roller giving a smaller angle and higher normal force). But as Tsun increases and the
normal force develops it results in significant elastic deformations mostly associated with
“Hertzian approach distances”. The result is that the wedge roller moves further into its wedge
Active wedge roller Idling wedge roller (for anticlockwise input sun torque)
C
B A
Hertzian contact regions
φ1 A, B and C
(a) Improved clamping control with HOCC (b) Near to ideal clamping control with SOCC
Graph 2(a) shows how the UT “Hard Over-clamping Control” or HOCC technology provides
better control of runaway over-clamping. The HOCC system allows clamping to develop initially
as shown in Graph 1, but once the wedge roller comes (in this example) within 10 mm of “top
dead centre”, a physical stop prevents it from moving any further into the wedge with the result
that the clamping force does not continue to increase. While HOCC does not achieve “ideal
clamping” it represents a significant improvement on the basic system shown in Graph 1.
Dependent on the specific shape of the duty cycle it may produce a near to optimal design.
The most basic form of the Silk Drive as illustrated in Figure 2 requires (roller) bearings to
support the inner rollers onto the inner roller carrier. The roller carrier acts as the “torque arm”
for the transmission and must support Tcarrier being the sum of the input and output torques.
Thus the force in these bearing increases in simple proportion to the applied torque Tsun. With
either HOCC or SOCC, bearings are also required to support the wedge rollers on the hard or
spring stop of these systems. Because of the high efficiency of the traction contacts, these
bearings are critical to the assessment of the transmission efficiency. Both HOCC and SOCC
affect these bearing loads in a relatively complex fashion. Fortunately as illustrated in Graphs 3,
the effects tend to be beneficial with the load on the wedge roller bearings substantially reducing
the load on the inner roller bearings.
Figure 2 shows “elastic linkages” that are necessary to hold the wedge rollers “snug tight” into
their wedges prior to the application of any torque. The UT “Preload” is a system for
implementing these elastic linkages. Under some conditions it may be advantageous to apply
substantial forces pressing the wedge rollers into their wedges prior to application of any torque.
The critical issue is durability and this is associated with the contact conditions between the sun,
the inner rollers, the wedge rollers and the ring. Each of these contacts is essentially equivalent
to the contact conditions between rollers and inner and outer rings in a radial bearing. Ultimate
Transmissions have developed the SN curve of Graph 5, derived form an analysis of the bearing
code and published papers for high quality but very common bearing steels
The characteristics of traction fluids are well established by manufacturers up to rolling speeds
of around 10m/sec. Graphs 4 and 5 together with mathematical modelling developed by
Ultimate Transmissions, provide the primary basis for reliable design of Silk Drives for a wide
range of applications and for assessment of the torque capacity, efficiency and durability of
those design.
Table 2 The relationship between electric motor speed and power density
This simple analysis of Table 2 demonstrates with some certainty that higher speed results in a
proportionally smaller motor. However very high or unlimited speeds are not possible without
improving several key motor support subsystems;
• The transmission that must convert the speed of the motor to the vehicle’s wheel speed
Typical North American family vehicles are designed for a vehicle speed of 110 mph or 180kph
in order to express to a consumer similar top speed performance to that of a vehicle powered
using Internal Combustion. With wheels 700mm in diameter this produces an axle speed of
around 1,360RPM. A 10,000 RPM motor requires a reduction ratio of 7.35 while the 20,000
motor requires double this at 14.7.
The 7.35 ratio can be delivered using a well understood two stage offset gear which is relatively
simple enough up to 10:1 overall ratio. Over 10:1 the transmission dynamics starts to become
unknown territory and the side loads created by the offset gears on the motor pinion gear
combined with very high speeds, severely limit the choice of bearings available for the output
end of the motor. Epicyclic gears become the only option, combined with either another
epicyclic or another offset gear.
The doubling of switching speed in the inverter will lead to higher inverter losses but with new
Silicon Carbide and Gallium Nitride switches maturing very rapidly this impediment is not likely to
inhibit high speeds for much longer.
The increasing centrifugal forces can be managed by re-arranging the motor geometry and by
taking advantage of the smaller radial dimensions and lighter magnets. It is considered however
that surface magnets wrapped with a pretensioned nonconductive fibre will start to emerge as a
better solution for high speed than imbedded magnets. As motor speed increases the motors
become more able to accommodate larger air gaps, and the amount of iron in the stator teeth
can reduce. Removing heat from the much smaller motor may require some rethinking of cooling
strategies.
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