3-D finite element analysis of long fiber reinforced composite spur gears

摘要

A method and a computer program are developed for 3-D finite element analysis of long fiber reinforced composite spur gears, in which long fibers are arranged along tooth profiles. For such a structure, the gear is composed of two regions; namely the long fiber reinforced and the chopped fiber reinforced regions. Pre and post-processing modules of the program for the finite element analysis are written in Borland Delphi Pascal 3.0. ABAQUS is used for finite element analysis. Main inputs for the pre-processing module of the program are, information on basic gear geometry, gear drive data, material properties and long fiber reinforcement geometry. Finite element meshes are automatically generated and mesh information with other required data are written to a file in the input-file-format of ABAQUS. Stresses are read from the output file of ABAQUS by the post-processing module, and color-coded drawings for various stresses and failure index are displayed. For the long fiber reinforced region, failure indexes are calculated by using the tensor polynomial failure criterion. Effects of reinforcing thickness and location of long fibers on gear strength are investigated. Stresses and failure index are calculated for different materials and fiber volume ratios.