A New Approach for Designing a Gearbox for a New Kind of Independently Controllable Transmissions

This paper deals with a new approach for the development of a gearbox of a new kind of variable transmissions, the independently controllable transmission (ICT). It provides a continuous output speed which is independent of the input speed. In the beginning the requirements of a gearbox are mentioned. Design guidelines are the starting point for the design process of the ICT gearbox. Some of these guidelines will be applied on the gearbox of the ICT to model rules which were needed for the design process. The process of the product design of the gearbox can be improved more efficiently by using multidisciplinary design optimization with evolutionary algorithms and topology optimization. This paper describes an approach for the development of this gearbox and the preparation of the optimization models based on a process chain, which is a guide for the next steps of creating the design process in detail. The first step is a parametric CAD model which consists of different parts and provides the complete design space of the gearbox.