Aeronautical

and Aerospace
Applications of Gears and Gearing.
Gears and gear drives are used extensively in aeronautical and aerospace applications.
Typically this will be any situation where the speed or direction of a drive shaft has to be
changed or in mechanisms where translation between a circular or linear motion is required.
There are few situations where you will not find gears involved. The notes below outline
some of the main and or interesting applications of different types of gears are used.
David Legge - Engineering Design Group
2016-07-25

Gas turbine - accessory drives

In a gas turbine numerous accessories such as engine starter, tachometer sensor drives, fuel
pumps, lubricating oil pumps, hydraulic pumps, generators, etc., etc. are driven by so called
accessory drives. Power is taken from the central shaft in the turbine and internal gearbox and
out via radial shafts (aka tower shafts) to the accessory and any related gearing.
Examples of internal and accessory drive gearboxes in a gas turbine engine can be seen in
Figure 1 and Figure 2 below.

Figure 1 The internal gearbox of a Rolls Royce Figure 2 Accessory drives showing gearing on
Pegasus engine (as used in the Harrier 'jump jet') Rolls Royce Pegasus Engine
Source: Wikipedia CC 3.0 "High Contrast" Source: Wikipedia CC 3.0 "High Contrast"

The gears used in accessory drive applications will be mainly spur and bevel gear
configurations. Bevel gears can be seen in Figure 1 at the lower end of the three vertical
shafts. All the other gears in the two figures above are plain spur gears.
Gas turbine - turbo-prop configurations
Turbo prop engines combine a gas turbine with either a propeller, in the case of aircraft, or
the rotor blade and tail rotor systems in helicopters. Because of the relatively high rotational
speed of gas turbines compared to the optimum speed for propellers (or rotor blades) a gear
box has to be used to reduce the speed of the output shaft of the gas turbine to something
more appropriate. In the case of the helicopter, the gearbox also puts in the 90o turn in the
drive-line needed between the horizontally oriented turbine and the vertical axis rotor blades.
The propeller on a military Airbus A400M and the transfer / reduction gearbox used to link
the gas turbine to the propeller on the same aircraft are shown in Figure 3 and Figure 4
below.

Figure 3 TP400 turbo prop fitted to the Airbus A400M Figure 4 TP400 main propeller gearbox.
Source wikipedia CC 4.0 "Julian Herzog" Source wikipedia CC 4.0 "Julian Herzog"

Gas turbine - geared turbofans

Another gas turbine related application of gears is in so called geared turbofans. Turbofan
engines incorporate a 'fan' before the compressor stage at the front of the gas turbine which
drive air past the engine and provide a significant proportion of the engine thrust (Shown in
green/blue in Figure 5).
Large fan diameters (so called high by-
pass ratio) are more efficient, but are
limited by the tip speed of the fans which
needs to be sub-sonic so need to run at
relatively low rpm. In contrast, the gas
turbine is more efficient at higher rpm.
Modern gas turbines use two or three
concentric shafts in their design; General
Electric use a two shaft- and Rolls Royce
a three shaft design in their large aero
engines. Implicit in these designs are a
Figure 5 Rolls Royce Ultra-Fan design concept
relatively low running compressor stage
incorporating a geared turbofan design. and a higher speed combustion stage
Source: flikr.com/rolls-royceplc depending on the design.

Further optimization of the speed of the fan and turbine parts can be achieved by putting a
gearbox between the fan and compressor stage.
The power to be transmitted by the gears in a geared
turbo-fan is significant. Epicyclic gears (Figure 6) are a
relatively compact solution where input and output are
co-axial and are able to cope with high power
transmission which could be anything from 25-50MW.
Even though the transmission is very efficient, around
99%, the seemingly small 1% loss representing some
250-500kW of excess heat which needs to be managed!
Although not the first with a geared turbo-fan design,
Pratt and Whitney have recently revealed their
PW1100G engine. Looking ahead, the Rolls Royce
UltraFan™ (Figure 5) is not expected to be ready for Figure 6 The epicyclic gearbox used in the
service from 2025 but will incorporate a geared fan PW1100G engine
Source Pratt & Whitney
design with a variable pitch system. This design will
offer at least 25 per cent improvement in fuel burn and
emissions against current baseline.

Harmonic drives - Apollo Lunar Rover

A gear reduction system known as strain
wave gearing or harmonic drive was used on
the lunar rover that transported astronauts
across the moon on the Apollo 15, 16 & 17
missions in the early 1970's (Figure 7).
Each wheel on the rover was powered
independently by a 190W motor running at
10,000 rpm. The harmonic drive gave an
80:1 reduction in a single stage. The design
was compact and easily integrated into each Figure 7 Lunar Rover in testing on the earth.
of the drive motors as shown in Figure 8. Source NASA

Figure 8 Cross section through one of the lunar rover drive motors. The harmonic drive consists of the
Flexspline, Circular Spline and Wave Generator; highlighted above.
Source: NASA