Effects of kinds of oil on power transmission: Efficiency of planetary traction drives

Abstract

One of the most interesting problems in traction drives is the analysis of their power transmission efficiency. Using an experimental two-disk machine and two planetary traction drives, together with fourteen test oils, it is shown that the power transmission efficiency can increase up to 97% in the case of an experimental planetary traction drive. The synthetic traction oils bring about a lower efficiency than mineral oils when the output torque is small. This is ascribed to their higher traction coefficients which cause larger friction in the rolling bearings which support the rolling elements.