Epicyclic gear trains for automotive automatic transmissions

Abstract Epicyclic gear trains, which contain at least four coaxial links, are widely used in automatic transmissions. This paper presents a systematic methodology for the synthesis of epicyclic gear trains for automotive automatic transmissions. The graph representation of epicyclic gear trains is applied to develop an approach for the structural synthesis of the graphs of admissible epicyclic gear trains. Next, for each admissible graph the adjacency matrix of an epicyclic gear train is defined to develop an algorithm for the configuration synthesis of epicyclic gear trains. Using the proposed algorithm, all possible epicyclic gear trains for automotive automatic transmissions are systematically synthesized. In this paper, admissible epicyclic gear trains with up to ten links have been successfully synthesized. The results of work will lead to the creation of new multispeed automotive automatic transmissions.