This paper was produced for the 2019 NAFEMS World Congress in Quebec Canada

Resource Abstract

Lubrication in automotive gear box address the balance between the reliability issue and the CO2 emission saving; and depends mainly on mass of oil and internal oil pathways. The efficiency of the lubrication is a balance between the oil mass usually limited as low as possible and the split of the oil mass in the different parts of the gear box. The objective is the maximum of the oil mass should be used for lubrication. The partway depends on both speed shafts conditions and internal geometric design of the gear box, including casing, gears and bearings. Consequently, geometric scales vary from 1 to 100.



Today and with its advancements in industrial applications, SPH-flow, using Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method, represents an interesting alternative to the conventional mesh-based methods such as Finite Element, Finite Volume and/or Finite Difference methods for an increasingly large set of applications. An important and interesting aspect of this method consists in its ability to couple with other methods, enabling complex multi-physics. It is especially adapted to high-dynamics phenomena with the presence of a free surface where mesh-dependent methods can suffer significantly.



A preliminary study was done on a simplified test case and first conclusions were applied in balance to CPU time consuming. Results were compared to experimental data and a second study was done using local refinement of the size of SPH particles.



Simulated oil pathway was compared to experimental results by transparent casing. The SPH-flow simulations predict accurately the main oil flows during splash lubrication highlighting the key parameters of gearbox lubrication mechanism.