HPC-based design of non-circular gears

Non-Circular Gears generate a prescribed motion with great precision, regardless of external factors. This is a highly desirable feature in advanced transmissions. Designing these gears is a complex process that requires a significant amount of expertise and expensive, computationally intensive iterations. In-house computing systems are not powerful enough to perform these calculations. A cloud-based engineering workflow would significantly shorten the time required to design and deliver an NCG. A key element of this is cost-effective access to the necessary computing power.

The partners developed an HPC-based engineering workflow for NCG design. The workflow, CloudGear, allows STAM to optimise the design of an NCG in less than 3 minutes, providing fast feedback concerning potential modifications and improvements. Previously, just the computation phase of the workflow would take 25 minutes, not including set-up and results delivery. Due to the near-real-time delivery of results, STAM is able to significant speed up its internal design process.