Eaton takes on EV challenges

Power management company Eaton’s Vehicle Group is developing gearing solutions for electrified vehicles.

Leveraging its expertise in producing transmissions and contract manufactured gear-sets for passenger and commercial vehicles, the Vehicle Group aims to be a leader in the global design, development and supply of EV reduction gearing.

The new technology complements Eaton’s eMobility power electronics portfolio in the electrified vehicle powertrain market.

“Automakers face many challenges when developing an EV, such as optimising efficiency, weight, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH), and dealing with packaging constraints,” the company says.

“We are partnering with OEM customers to leverage our expertise in simulation, design and manufacturing to optimise the efficiency, NVH and weight of high-precision gearing systems tailored to specific customer needs,” Eaton’s Vehicle Group EV gearing director Anthony Cronin says.

Eaton can partner with customers on joint-development projects or serve as a single service provider of EV reduction gearing components or systems.

It does a total system analysis to design EV gearing solutions optimised for efficiency and reliability, with low noise and manufacturing costs.

A full-system approach is essential when tailoring a design to a specific customer need, as several factors influence the development of gearing solutions, Eaton says.

“Chief among those factors are the gears, bearings and lubrication system.”

Eaton applies a series of in-house design and manufacturing techniques, including gear root geometry optimisation for maximum strength, micro and macro gear geometry modelling to improve NVH, efficiency and reliability, thrust load and bearing loss minimisation to improve reliability and simplify or downsize bearings, and simulation and selection of lubrication solutions for full-system reliability and efficiency.

Its engineers evaluate existing layouts or develop “clean-sheet” solutions that work within a customer’s packaging constraint. The Eaton team also provides solutions for scaling the EV gearing layout for platforms with multiple torque requirements.

Eaton has identified opportunities to improve gearing system efficiency by up to 1%, reduce weight by up to 20% and size by up to 10%. These benefits can be applied to both light-duty and commercial electrified vehicles, the company says.

With electrified vehicles, Eaton says that even small efficiency improvements provide vehicle manufacturers with new opportunities to manage vehicle range or improve cost and weight.

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