Peristaltic pumps are widely used in biomedical applications to ensure the safe flow of sterile or medical fluids. They are commonly employed for drug injections, IV fluids, and blood separation (apheresis). These pumps operate through a progressive contraction or expansion along a flexible tube, enabling fluid flow. They are also utilized in industrial applications for sanitary fluid transport, corrosive fluid handling, and novel pharmacological delivery systems. This research provides valuable insights into the selection and optimal design of the powertrain stages for peristaltic pumps implemented in drug delivery systems. The focus of this paper lies in the simulation and optimization of the performance of a power transmission gearbox by examining the energy consumption, sound levels, reliability, and volume as output metrics. The components of the powertrain consist of a helical gear pair for the first stage, a bevel gear pair for the second one, and finally a planetary transmission. Through extensive simulations, the model exhibits promising results, achieving an efficiency of up to 90%. Furthermore, alternative configurations were investigated to optimize the overall performance of the powertrain. This process has been simulated by employing the KISSsoft/KISSsys software package. The findings of this investigation contribute to advancements in the field of biomedical engineering and hold significant potential for improving the efficiency, reliability, and performance of drug delivery mechanisms.

In this study, an infusion roller pump comprising two separate innovative resilient tube designs is presented. The first incorporates the flexible tubing cross-section area in its relaxed state as a lenticular one for power reduction reasons. The second keeps the previous lenticular cross-section along its length, while it additionally incorporates an inflating portion, for creating a momentary flow positive pulse to balance the void generated by the roller disengagement. Fluid–Structure Interaction (FSI) simulations cannot provide quantitatively realistic results, due to the limitation of full compression of the tube, and are only used qualitatively to reveal by which way to set the inflated portion along the tube length in order to suppress backflow and achieve constant flow rate. Finally, indirect lumen volume measurements were performed numerically and an optimum design was found testing eight design approaches. These indirect fluid volume measurements assess the optimum inflated tube’s portion leading to backflow and pulsating elimination. The optimum design has an inflation portion of 75 degrees covering almost 42% of the curved part of the tube, while it has a constant zone with the maximum value of inflated lenticular cross-section, within the portion, of 55 degrees covering about 73% of the inflation portion.

In recent years, multidisc wet friction clutches are used in demanding powertrains of automatic and dual clutch transmissions targeting high efficiency and smoothness during gearshift. However, the developed flow pattern between the clutch discs is significantly complex and the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods employed are quite demanding in terms of computational cost. To deal with this issue semi-analytical solutions were derived, which are limited, however, to specific problems, in order to obtain handy expressions, while also providing insight to the wet clutch physics. Nevertheless, this lack of global validity is counterbalanced by the fact that the governing equations become analytically solvable at specific operational conditions with satisfactory accuracy, provided that the simplifications rendering the truncated terms inactive hold true. In this work, a quantitative way of determining the relative weight of each term of the Navier-Stokes (NS) equations set is presented, based on the post-processing of CFD results using the Buckingham “π-theorem”. The sets of nondimensional numbers created were used to describe and model the physics of the wet clutch.

The most common gear strength calculations performed in accordance with ISO/TC 60/SC 2 include surface durability and root bending strength. Typical geared power transmissions are characterized by high Hertzian contact stresses (surface durability) on the flanks – frequently in the order of 10³ MPa – versus almost half an order magnitude lower first principal stresses on the tooth root (tooth bending strength). Therefore, the use of high strength special steel alloys is almost mandatory, especially in high-end applications, mainly to withstand the high contact stress values. Ceramic materials are typically characterized by high compressive strength versus very low flexural strength that at first glance makes them inefficient for gear transmissions since they are unlikely to withstand the tensile root stresses. Nevertheless, ceramic materials possess a number of advantages that makes them potential candidates for geared transmissions, such as their exceptional thermal properties, their low density (weight), their excellent wear characteristics and limited lubrication demands. The present work investigates the main challenges of using high-end ceramic gears and attempts to provide an insight on defining the design envelope of such gears to counter the main disadvantages. The increase of the normal pressure angle beyond the 25° limit set by ISO 6336 is primarily investigated, since in minimizes the tensile tooth root stresses, while also increasing the curvature of the contact surfaces without greatly increasing Hertzian stresses. Comparative assessment of the performance of fully ceramic gear designs versus their conventional steel counterparts is performed through quasi-static FEA simulations to set the basic design requirements for such gears and to promote further investigation of the feasibility of their usage in high power density applications.

The present work dwells with the dynamic modeling of high-pressure angle spur gears ranging from 30 to 35 degrees. The benefits and potential of such gears in terms of dynamic performance is explored. A custom optimized spur gear tooth root geometry is used to construct the root area of the case studies presented and compared versus standardized ISO geometries. An extension of the closed-form load and position-dependent mesh stiffness previously developed by the authors is introduced to accommodate the hereby studied non-standard gear geometries. The non-linear load and position-dependent mesh stiffness is formulated in closed form using a hybrid polynomial/ logarithmic approximation and validated versus finite element results. The non-implicit single degree of freedom (DOF) dynamic model employed is discussed in detail and manages to successfully predict the dynamic transmission error of a gear pair as well as meshing nonlinearities including contact reversal and loss of contact. We present an extensive comparison of the dynamic behavior between standard 20-degre and high-pressure angle gears, for a wide range of rotational speed and transmitted torque values. A colormap with the peak-to-peak transmission error values indicates significant regions of gear operation where high-pressure angle geometries result to a favorable dynamic response. We further examine the transmission error response limit cycle by comparing phase diagrams of different geometries under specific rotational speed and torque conditions. Clear improvement of the transmission error values is demonstrated for the majority of the tested scenarios suggesting increased performance of high pressure angle gears versus conventional geometries.