Abstract
Gerotor is a planar mechanism consisting of a rotor and lobes which form a closed space, namely a chamber. As active contact points between a rotor and lobes are subjected to very high contact stresses, wear in one or both of the rotor and lobe cannot be avoided. Therefore, in the design of Gerotor used in hydraulic motors a compromise between high torque output and contact stress is of great importance and a thorough analysis of design parameters should be conducted to achieve this compromise. In this study, a contact point is modelled as a linear spring in consideration of equivalent curvature to analyze the contact stress. As the contact stress calculation in this problem is a statically indeterminate type, a numerical iterative scheme has been adopted to obtain the solution. To fully understand the influence of design parameters on the contact stress, the relationship between pressure force, equivalent curvature, contact force and contact stress are analyzed. It is shown that the equivalent curvature of the contact point is a dominant factor that affects the maximum contact stress.
