Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm for Helical Gear Designing in Non-lubricated Condition

Due to the standardization of helical gear design parameters and the constraints involved in the design and manufacturing, the size of the helical gear pairs are higher than the required. To improve the gear efficiency and performance, optimizing the helical gear parameters became essential. While significant research efforts have developed for less constrained systems, design for over-constrained such as without lubrication, negligible vibrations, etc have not been studied as extensively. A feasible design should consider all the constraints and should prioritize them based on application, cost, ease in manufacturing, etc. Removal of blockages and satisfying the constraints will results in cost minimization with increase in effectiveness of the system. A heuristic algorithm for helical gear optimization problem has been developed and reported based on Ants Colony Optimization approach. The helical gear problem have formulated as a combined objective maximization problem and constraints as the limits to prevent the infeasible solution formation. Two items considered apart from the traditional design are the non-lubrication condition and vibration applied to several scenarios. Finally a comprehensive comparative analysis had performed and thereby demonstrated the performance of ACO. It has been observed that ACO yielded better results in less computational time.