Designing of two load bearing surfaces in a modern high-speed steam engine

Abstract: The topic of this thesis is the designing of two load bearing surfaces in a modern high-speed steam expander. One of the surfaces is a synchronizing gear structure and the other a conical surface. The goal besides the design is to calculate the contact pressure these surfaces experience during operation. This is achieved by using a machine element design software called KISSsoft for the gear’s more complex geometry. The design process for the conical surfaces is based on analytical calculations that utilizes Hertzian contact theory and the contact pressures the designs amount to is investigated by the use of FEA. The designing process used for the surfaces with regards to placement and geometry resulted in two different concepts. The main difference between the two resulting concepts were how the surfaces were located relative to each other. The gear structure for both concepts were so-called spiral bevel gears, which are conical gears with spiral teeth. The conical surfaces of each concept utilizes crowing of one of the surfaces. The crowing was deemed as a necessary design detail and the magnitude of the crowning radius was used to control the resulting contact pressure.