Web-based manual gear box design system with virtual reality feature

Abstract

As the complexity of a product has increased dramatically, various design and manufacturing activities scattered across space, time and discipline are becoming unmanageable. Industries need means to adapt rapidly to new market trend and regulation. Therefore, to gain competitiveness in a global market, an infrastructure that efficiently coordinates a variety of design and manufacturing activities at various locations is necessary for industry. Moreover, the current demand to reduce the time and cost involved in taking a product from conceptualization to production has forced companies to turn to virtual design. Designing a new gearbox generally takes quite long time from initial calculations until the first prototype and requires good design decisions and precise calculations. Aim of this paper is to reduce the time spent for designing gearboxes and increasing reliability which can be easily adapted to satisfy the user's desires to design a gearbox. A web-based expert system gear box design has been proposed to simplify the calculations and give the right steps to achieve a better design for a manual gearbox. Indeed, this software will help the designers to check the design results and to visualize the internal work of a manual gearbox during the designing process through the Virtual Reality Environment.