Optimum dog-leg angle for mass and bearing force optimization of multistage gear reduction

This paper describes a method to minimize bearing forces as well as bearing and housing mass for a multistage gear reduction. This is done by finding the optimum dog-leg angles for the stages while leaving other aspects of the design unaltered. The optimization is demonstrated first for spur gears, and then for helical gears typically used in electric vehicles. A numerical example shows how bearing forces and mass of bearings and housing are reduced considerably by choosing the optimum dog-leg angle.