Numerical and Experimental Investigation of Oil-Guiding Splash Lubrication in Light Helicopter’s Reducers

Abstract

Limited by the space and weight of the reducer, it is difficult to use traditional oil-jet lubrication and splash lubrication for a light helicopter, so an oil-guiding splash lubrication method is adopted as a research object in this paper. Firstly, the lubrication performance of the oil-guiding cylinder in the main reducer under different rotating speeds, oil levels, and flight attitudes is investigated based on the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. Then, a specific test rig is developed, and lubrication tests are carried out to verify the feasibility and correctness of the simulation. These results show that oil level, rotating speed, and flight attitude have a great influence on splash lubrication performance.

Keywords

• splash lubrication
• oil-guiding cylinder
• computational fluid dynamics
• numerical simulation