Engineering case study about Gear ratio:

Gear ratio can be defined as the ratio of the angular velocity of the input gear to that of the output gear. In the epicycle gearing system the gear ratio cannot be determined easily as in this system there are multiple ways to convert the input rotation into the output rotation. The three basic components of these types of gear are : 1) The central gear which is also called as Sun 2) The planet carrier which carries one or more planet gears at peripheral which are of same size and are meshed with the sun gear 3) The outer ring having inward-facing teeth which meshes with the planet gear or gears and also called as Annulus. The components of an epicycle gearing systems have been defined above but it needs to be noted that one of these three components is held stationary. Out of the remaining components one act as an input to provide power to the system while the other component acts as an output to receive power from the system. The number of teeth in each gear and the component which is held stationary defines the ratio of input and output rotation. In another type of systems, say hybrid vehicle transmissions to number of components which act as input may vary. Here two components act as input and the third provide output. There can be many arrangements of the gears. In one of these arrangements, the career which stays stationary is planetary carrier (green) and the input gear is the Sun (yellow). The rotation of planetary gears happens at the axis and the rotation rate is defined by the number of teeth in the constituent gears. Assuming that the sun gear has Ns teeth, and planet gear has No teeth, then the rotation rate is equal to -Ns/Np. For instance, if the sun gear has 20 teeth, and each planet has 12 teeth, then the ratio is -20/12, or -5/3; this can be interpreted as when sun gear rotates by one turn in clockwise manner the planet gear rotates by 1.66 in counter clockwise manner. The rotation of

planet gears will further rotate the annulus in the corresponding ratio. Assuming that the annulus has Na teeth, then the no. of rotations of the annulus will be Np/Na turns for planet gear turn. For example, if the annulus has 48 teeth, and the planets 24 teeth then, one clockwise turn made by the planet gear will result in 24/48, or 1/2 turns of the annulus in clockwise direction. Hence we can say that when sun gear rotates by one turn the planet gear rotates by - Ns / Np turns and when planet gear rotates by one turn, the annulus rotates by Np / Na turns. Thus, one turn of sun gear results in Ns / Na turns in annulus. There can be reverse process also where the annulus is held fixed and the input is given to the planetary gear carrier and then output rotation is received at sun gear. In this setup the gear ratio will increase to 1+Na/Ns. The corresponding equation to describe this configuration is:

where n = form factor of planetary gear = N s / N p In the same manner we can also keep annulus as stationary and sun gear as input and planetary carrier as output. The corresponding gear ratio will be 1/ (1+Na/Ns). It can be noted that this is the lowest gear ratio attained in an epicyclic gear train. The practical application of these types of gears is in construction equipment and tractors where a larger torque is required to drive wheels. The second practical application is in the hub gears used in bicycles where the sun gear act as stationary as it is keyed to the axle, the input gear is the planetary carrier and the gear ratio is (Ns+Na)/Na.

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