A Study on the Contact Behaviors of Infinitely Variable Transmission System with Full Toroidal Shapes of Disks

Abstract

The torque of the continuously variable transmission system with friction drive mechanism is transmitted by contacting roller with input and output disks. For the higher transmitted torque, it is necessary to apply large load in order to get higher friction force, which in turn generates severe high stress on the contact surfaces of roller and disks. The toroidal type CVT system has simple component arrays that have three contact points between roller and each input or output disk to get the torque transmitted. However, compact assembly design of the three sets of rollers contacting with input and output disks needs the roller to stay with unsymmetrical angled position with each other. Therefore, the contact shapes between roller and disk vary according to the transmission ratio and should be investigated to avoid the excessive contact stress over than ~1.8 GPa. In this study, the contact geometries of roller and disks in the toroidal type CVT system are computed during the gear ratios. The contact area of which the size depends on the material elasticity, curvatures of roller and disk, and applied load are all of elliptic shapes because of the convex and concave curvatures of roller and disk shapes, respectively. From the computed results considering the size of roller diameter, roller stroke and applied load, it is found that the shapes of contact area changes the sizes of major and minor elliptical diameters in the rolling direction during the gear ratios due to the unsymmetrical angled position of roller.