A Study on Efficiency of Tapered Roller Bearing for an Automatic Transmission

Abstract

Automotive fuel efficiency regulations and air pollution control are hot issues of recent years in the automotive industry. To solve these regulation problems, many studies are continuing to improve the transmission efficiency of transmissions. Tapered roller bearings are useful to improve the transmission efficiency in the recent automobile parts. The frictional losses in the tapered roller bearings are mainly composed of the rolling friction and the sliding friction, and are dependent upon the load, the lubrication, the rotation speed of bearings, and etc. In this paper, the operating conditions of the transmission are defined and then the power losses of each bearing are calculated. In addition, improvement options are suggested after identifying the design factors influenced much by the improvement effect of power loss under the operating conditions of each bearing. We compare the power losses of the entire transmission system due to bearing improvements by comparing the friction losses between the original design and the improved design. Lastly, it is shown that the calculated power losses are valid by comparing the test values and the theoretical values for the frictional torque characteristics of the original and improved bearings.