Technical Paper
Noise Reduction in Two Wheeler Gears Using Austempered Ductile Iron
2003-09-16
2003-32-0041
Gear noise can be attributed to several reasons such as gear design parameters, gear material used etc., Owing to design, spur gears during operation produce noise. A change in gear design to helical would reduce the noise, but at the cost of an increase in friction as in operation it produces an axial thrust. A more economic and effective way of noise reduction in gears would be to go in for a material, which has good damping characteristics in order to reduce the noise levels significantly. A new member of the cast iron family, Austempered Ductile Iron (ADI), is a heat treated Spheroidal Graphite Iron(SGI). The microstructure exhibits ausferritic structure with a high volume of carbon-enriched austenite and nodular graphite. This offers the gear designer a combination of manufacturing flexibility, high strength, toughness, low weight, excellent fatigue strength and wear resistance. These properties are present along with good damping capacity and machinability.