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Cylindrical gear with variable hyperbolic circular arc tooth trace (VH-CATT) is a new type of gear. Sliding wear is the main mode of the surface failure of multiple mechanical parts. Both the lubrication state and contact temperature considerably influence wear characteristics, which may aggravate the transmission performance of gear pairs. Wear, contact temperature, as well as lubrication states are jointly explored. Therefore, an integrated wear prediction model was proposed through taking into account flash contact temperature and surface roughness of VH-CATT cylindrical gears in mixed elastohydrodynamic lubrication. According to the equivalent ellipse contact model of VH-CATT cylindrical gears and tooth surface equation, normal curvature and velocity relations for VH-CATT cylindrical gears were observed, and the normal meshing force was obtained through the consideration of load sharing coefficients and quality grades. Flash contact temperature was estimated by using the literature. This study proposes analytical solutions for investigating how various surface roughness, operation, and geometric parameters affect asperity contact ratio (ACR), asperity contact pressure (ACP), flash contact temperature (FCT), as well as wear depth (WD) related to driving gears. ACR, ACP, FCT, as well as WD initially decrease and then increase from engaging-in to engaging-out processes. The minimum occurs at the pitch point. The WD declines as module, cutter radius, and rotational velocity increase while augmenting when surface roughness and torques increase. The maximum and minimum wear depths in driving gears occur at the dedendum and pitch point, respectively. Its overall wear is reduced by 23.16 % compared to the wear of spur gears. The results are valuable for the studies of tooth pitting, wear resistance, and fatigue life improvement for VH-CATT cylindrical gear. These studies can provide verification data and references required for engineering designs and VH-CATT cylindrical gear operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In dealing with the dynamics of a flexible body, the rigid-body motions and elastic vibrations are analyzed separately. However, rigidbody motions cause vibrations, and elastic vibrations affect rigid-body motions, indicating the inherent coupling between rigid-body motions and elastic vibrations. The coupled equations of motion for a flexible body can be derived by means of Lagrange's equations in terms of quasi-coordinates. The resulting equations of motion are hybrid and nonlinear. This paper proposes a unified approach for the equations of motion for a flexible body based on the perturbation method and the Lagrange's equations of motion in terms of quasicoordinates and Euler parameters to analyze a more general case maneuvering. The resulting equations consist of zero-order nonlinear equations of motion which depict rigid-body motions and first-order time-varying linear equations of motion which depict perturbed rigid-body motions and elastic vibration. Hence, the input-shaped maneuvering can be applied to the zero-order equation considering the induced vibrations. Since the input-shaped maneuvering alone cannot achieve vibration suppression, the vibration suppression controller combined with the input-shaped maneuvering is proposed in this study. As a numerical example, a hub with elastic appendages is considered. Numerical results show that the unified modeling approach proposed in this paper is effective in numerical simulation and control design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clearances in the joints of mechanisms are unavoidable because of numerous uncertainties, such as manufacturing tolerances, assembly processes, and progressing wear. The dynamic characteristics of a planar slider-crank mechanism, including clearance joint and balancing mechanism, are investigated in this study using a computational method. A suitable model is built using the simulation software ADAMS, in which actual features, such as contact and friction, are considered. A contact-impact model that incorporates the IMPACT function and that considers energy loss in the contact process, is also built. The experimental platform is established and acceleration experiments on the mechanical system at different driving speeds are conducted. Obtained tests results demonstrate that the dynamic response of a multibody mechanical system can be effectively predicted using the proposed method. Furthermore, the effects of the driving speed of the crank shaft, the size of the joint clearance, and the balancing mechanism on the dynamic characteristics of the mechanism are studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The abnormal growth of tissue, called pannus, is frequently found in patients who have an implanted prosthetic heart valve. Its growth is related to the valve dysfunction and disturbed blood flow in the aorta. We performed in vitro experiments to demonstrate the effects of pannus formation on hemodynamics and valvular function. The results showed that the opening angle of the heart valve changes depending on the size and shape of the pannus. The circular pannus decreased the maximum opening angle of the heart valve. Although the opening motion of the valve was not affected by the semi-circular pannus, one of the valve leaflets obstructed by the semi-circular pannus had a closing dysfunction during the cardiac cycle, implying aortic insufficiency and regurgitation in the patients with this type of pannus formation. The experimentally measured pressure gradient and velocity-based transvalvular pressure gradient estimation increased with the growth of the pannus, although a discrepancy between the two estimations was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]