Original Article

Proc IMechE Part C:

J Mechanical Engineering Science
Optimisation methodology for lightweight 0(0) 1–12
! IMechE 2017

gears to be produced by additive Reprints and permissions:

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manufacturing techniques DOI: 10.1177/0954406217737107

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Andrea Mura, Francesca Curà and Luca Pasculli

Abstract
In this work, a new design procedure to optimise lightweight gears is presented. Lightweight gears find application in all
industrial fields where the weight of the structure is a key factor. Thanks to the new additive manufacturing techniques,
it is possible to better distribute the wheel material and therefore increase gear performance. The proposed procedure
acts on the material distribution in order to enhance wheel dynamic performance and reduce weight. The new design
procedure has been applied to a real airplane gear in order to evaluate if the optimisation procedure can be useful to
improve wheel performance. Results show improved performance of the optimised wheel respect to the reference
wheel. The optimised wheel geometry is supposed to be manufactured by additive manufacturing techniques.

Keywords
Gear, additive manufacturing, transmission error, optimisation, lightweight gears

Date received: 14 July 2017; accepted: 22 September 2017

weight reduction bringing to a reduction of the vehicle

Introduction
In the recent years, the environmental issues asso-
ciated with energy consumption and air pollution
have increased the importance of efficiency in gear
transmission systems. Means to attain more efficient
gear transmissions include using lightweight gears.
Lightweight gears (or thin-rim gears) find applica-
tion in all industrial fields where the weight of the
structure is a key factor, as an example in aerospace
applications and in electrical vehicles.
Even if gears seem a mature technology, there are
many possibilities of development and the research on
this topic is very active. In particular, improvement in
gear technology may be achieved by exploiting new man-
ufacturing technologies such as additive manufacturing
(AM). Lightweight gear is a kind of component that may
take the best advantages from AM techniques.1
Lightweight gears are present in aerospace applica-
tions, in airplane and helicopters engines. In particular,
with the developing of new high-efficiency airplane
engines, (such as the Geared Turbo Fan engines, where
the turbine is connected to the fan through a reduction
gearbox2), lightweight gears play a critical role.
Also in automotive field, thin-rim gears are finding
even more interest because of the development of new
electrical vehicles.
In general, lightweight gears are more expensive
compared to standard ones, but they allow a huge
mass and so to an increase of the vehicle efficiency and
performance.
Nowadays, this kind of gears are produced by trad-
itional material-removing processes, and the wheel
geometry is limited to classical configurations where
the gear teeth belong to the rim that is in turn con-
nected to the hub by a thin web.3 This geometry is due
to the manufacturing process limits and brings to
problems related to the gear dynamic.
In particular, transverse vibrations of shaft-gear sys-
tems (classical lightweight configurations) can influence
the dynamic load, resulting in coupled motions where
the pinion and/or wheel combine torsional and lateral
vibrations. Web thinness and rim thickness are respon-
sible of a nonuniform distribution of mass and stiffness
that strongly influences the in-operation behaviour of
the transmission and that has to be taken carefully into
account in fatigue calculations.4
A better material distribution could be a first step to
allow higher dynamic performance and weight reduction,
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Politecnico di
Torino, Torino, Italy
Corresponding author:
Andrea Mura, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
Politecnico di Torino, C.so Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy.
Email: andrea.mura@polito.it
2 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
but realising complex optimised wheel geometry with
classical manufacturing methods is nearly impossible.
Practically speaking, this kind of gear should need
an optimised design in order to obtain a better material
distribution to enhance dynamic behaviour and reduce
weight; anyhow, in order to realise such optimised
geometry, a manufacturing process that allows to
easily realise any shape with acceptable costs is needed.
A possible solution could be realising the wheel by
AM techniques. With this new kind of production
method, the object to be produced is created layer
by layer, adding material instead of removing it.
At early stage, AM techniques used soft materials,
mainly polymers, and were known as 3D printing;
now the technology development allows to realise
three-dimensional objects by printing metals. The
most common AM techniques involving metals use
a metal powder as raw material, which is layered
and then melted (usually by a laser beam) to create
a layer of the object to be realised. The process con-
tinues layer by layer until the object is totally created.5
The main advantage of AD techniques is the pos-
sibility to create, from the theoretical point of view,
any kind of geometrical shape allowing infinite possi-
bilities in components design.
The AM process itself allows improving material
efficiency, reducing life-cycle impact and primary
energy consumption.6
Lightweight gears are mainly studied in the litera-
ture about what concerns fatigue strength, crack
propagation and gear dynamics. As some examples,
Lewicki and Ballarini7 and Lewicki8 and Curà et al.9
investigated the crack path behaviour in thin rim
gears. Other works are more related to the fatigue
life estimation such as Kramberger et al.10 who inves-
tigated the effect of rim thickness on bending fatigue
life of a thin rim gear for truck gearbox. Podrug
et al.11 considered the effect of moving gear tooth
load on the crack initiation life and Amiri et al.12
calculated the fatigue life of a helical gear.
All these studies are related to classical wheel
geometry (a wheel consisting of a thin rim, connected
to the hub by a thin web), because, due to the manu-
facturing processes, no alternative geometries are till
now available.
Moreover, in the literature, there is no evidence of
any work about thin rim gears optimisation neither to
gears produced by AM.
Nevertheless, the need of reducing gears weight is
an important issue,13 and in the literature, it is pos-
sible to find few works proposing alternative solutions
to reduce wheel weight such as composite gears14 and
bimetallic gears.15
The aim of this work is to develop a lightweight
gear design optimisation method to enable the pro-
duction of lightweight gears by AM, in order to fill the
literature gap about this topic. Better material distri-
bution and weight reduction are primarily goals of the
novel methodology.
The impact of this research project should be
related not only on economic issues, but mainly the
improvement in lightweight gear technology would
allow designing more efficient and performant air-
planes and vehicles.
Let us consider that a 1% reduction in the gross
weight of an empty aircraft will reduce fuel consump-
tion between 0.25% and 0.75%.16 Therefore, the use
of new complex geometry lightweight gears, proposed
in this research work, would help to reduce fuel con-
sumption and the related pollution. In a recent paper,
figures show that AM techniques hold great potential
for improving materials efficiency, reducing life-cycle
impacts compared to conventional manufacturing.17
This last point is also very important because this
research work would enable the production of com-
plex geometry gears by AM techniques with all the
above quoted advantages.
The design optimisation procedure developed in this
paper has been applied to optimise a real gear used in
an airplane reduction gearbox. Gear performance has
been evaluated by numerical simulations, performed by
means of dedicated commercial software.
Results show that the proposed optimisation pro-
cedure allows to reduce gear weight and to increase
the wheel dynamic performance in terms of vibration
and noise reduction.
Moreover, results highlight that lightweight gears
can get benefits from AM as, due to the flexibility of
these kinds of production methods, it is possible to
achieve a better mass distribution from the dynamic
point of view that it is not possible to reach by trad-
itional machining methods.
Wheel optimisation
In this work, a general procedure to optimise the
design of lightweight gears is presented. In particular,
this procedure is developed to generate a spoke wheel.
Starting from the study of a reference wheel, it is
possible to identify the target parameters of the meth-
odology that consist in mass, first natural frequency,
static safety factor (SF) and transmission error.
The transmission error is considered as the primary
cause of gear whine noise generation and it can be
defined as the difference between the position of the
contact point along the line of action and the position
that it would be had in the case of ideal gears.18,19
This displacement induces forces in the system
that generally vary in amplitude, direction and pos-
ition. These forces are transmitted via the shafts
through the bearing to the housing and this generates
the production of sound radiation that it is perceived
as a noise.
As tooth microgeometry heavily affect the trans-
mission error,20–23 in this work, the tooth shape has
been kept the same in all the considered test cases, in
order to investigate only the effect of wheel body
configuration.
Mura et al.
The main objectives of this novel methodology are
the reduction of wheel mass and noise. According to
the design requirements, one of the two above quoted
parameters can be stetted as a prior goal.
To reduce noise, the procedure acts on increasing
the first natural frequency and reducing the transmis-
sion error. The optimisation procedure guarantees
both static and fatigue strength of the wheel, almost
from the calculation point of view.
As described in the previous section, there would be
infinite possibilities, in terms of geometrical configur-
ations, to optimise a wheel. In this work, spoke wheels
have been considered as a general geometrical config-
uration. In spoke wheels, the gear rim is connected to
the hub by means of a certain number of spokes.
Given this wheel configuration, the parameters
considered for the optimisation (in other terms the
parameters that can vary to get the optimal solution)
are mainly two: the number of spoke pairs and the
inertia of the spokes section. The second parameter
involves spoke shape and dimensions.
In this work, the software Romax Designer has been
used to perform the static, dynamic and transmission
error calculations. Romax Designer is a commercial
software dedicated for transmission and gears design
and analysis, and it used different approaches for the
calculation including finite elements multibody.
Table 1. Transmission system data.
itot 17
Number of teeth of the conduct 104
wheel (first reduction stage)
Maximum permitted transient 38237 [Nm]
propeller over torque
Maximum continuous propeller 35405 [Nm]
torque
Max propeller speed 1020 [r/min]
Cruise propeller speed 850 [r/min]
Figure 1. Reference wheel.
3
Test case
To better explain the optimisation procedure and to
evaluate its reliability, a real case has been analysed:
the conduct bi-helical gear of the first reduction stage
of a Bombardier Q400 turbo prop transmission
system. Main parameters of the transmission system
are shown in Table 1.
The material used for this analysis is a steel alloy
known as Pyrowear 53 (yield stress ¼ 965 MPa).
Figure 1 shows the reference gear, while Figure 2
resumes the main wheel geometrical parameters. The
wheel within the gearbox is fixed by two roller bear-
ings; this will be better explained in Phase 6 section
(Figure 14).
Optimisation procedure
The optimisation procedure consists of six steps
(phases):
. Phase 1: Calculation of the reference parameters
(weight, first natural frequency, transmission
error, SF) of the original wheel.
. Phase 2: Identification of the first configuration of
the spoke wheel (calculation of the number of
spoke pairs).
. Phase 3: First optimisation of the spokes geometry
(weight reduction).
. Phase 4: Second optimisation of the spokes geom-
etry (increase spokes stiffness to increase the wheel
first natural frequency). Studying the first mode
shape of the output configuration of phase 3, and
identification of a strategy to increase the first nat-
ural frequency acting on the increasing of the
spokes section inertia.
. Phase 5: Third optimisation of the spokes geometry
studying the first mode shape of the output config-
uration of phase 4, identification of a strategy to
redistribute the saving mass in the areas with greater
deformation to increase the first natural frequency.
4 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

Figure 2. Reference wheel main dimensions (mm).

. Phase 6: Calculation of the transmission error.

Figure 3 shows the flow diagram of the optimisa-

tion procedure.
Phases 2–5 involve wheel strength calculation (both
static and fatigue) in order to verify that the proposed
solution satisfies the required static and fatigue
strengths.
In the next sections, each optimisation phase will
be explained with reference to the real test case
described above.

Phase 1. The first phase consists in analysing the

actual wheel (the wheel to be optimised) in order to
calculate the reference values of the parameters to be
optimised. These parameters are wheel mass, first nat-
ural frequency and transmission error. In addition,
both static and fatigue analysis have been performed
in order to evaluate the stress state and the SF of the
reference wheel.
The obtained target parameters values are
mass 12.84 kg; first natural frequency 209.7Hz and
static SF 3.

Phase 2. In the second phase, the wheel optimisation

starts. The main goal of this phase is to achieve a first
tentative spoke wheel to be better optimised in the
next steps. In particular, here the number of spoke
pairs (i) is calculated in order to have not more than
the same mass as the original wheel. At this step, the
spoke length is equal to the teeth face width. The
spokes are tangent to the hub; this solution allows a
reduced stress field respect to the configuration of
spokes perpendicular to the hub (Figure 4).
To calculate the number of spoke pairs (i), the
procedure starts with a configuration with i ¼ 1
(Figure 4), then the spoke pair number is increased
until the wheel mass overcome the reference wheel
Figure 3. Flow diagram of the optimisation procedure.
mass. Then the actual number of spokes is the one
before the reference mass is overcome.
In addition, both static and fatigue analysis are until the reference mass values are reached. After
performed in order to check the wheel strength. If every added spoke pair, the wheel stress analysis has
this verification is not passed, the spoke thickness is been performed.
increased. The breakeven point in terms of mass for the con-
In this case, the spoke thickness h has been set to sidered wheel has been found at 6 spoke pair, as
2 mm. The number of spoke pairs has been increased shown in Figure 5.
Mura et al.
Figure 4. Spoke wheel at first iteration.
Figure 5. Trend of wheel mass versus spokes number.
Figure 6. Wheel geometry after optimisation phase 2.
Figure 5 shows that with 6 spoke pairs, the wheel
weight exceeds the target parameter, and for this
reason, in this case, the output wheel from the phase
2 has 5 spoke pairs (imax ¼ 5) as shown in Figure 6.
Results in terms respectively of Von Mises static
stress (lower than the yield stress) and of first fre-
quency value (that increases with the number of
spokes) are resumed in Figure 7.
Phase 3. Starting from the output of the second phase
(Figure 6), in this phase a strategy whose main goal is
the reduction of the mass has to be identified. Spoke
5
length has been reduced dividing each spoke in seg-
ments, obtaining an array along the face width as
shown in Figure 8.
A new geometrical parameter has so been defined,
that is the depth of the spokes full section (dimension
b in Figure 8).
In this example, spokes have been divided in five
segments, distant 10 mm, that allow to have
b ¼ 12 mm.
Stress analysis shows that this configuration satis-
fies the strength requirement, so it is possible to con-
tinue the procedure to step 4.
Phase 4. This step involves the dynamic verification of
the reached configuration. In particular, the modal
analysis of the wheel described in the phase 3 has
been performed, focusing on the first mode shape
(Figure 9) in order to identify the flexional deflection,
which is an optimisation parameter.
Figure 9 shows that in this example the highest
bending deflection is in Z direction.
In this phase, a strategy to control the frequency
range for the first natural frequency has been identi-
fied (as an example, the first natural frequency has
been doubled, see Results paragraph), without
increasing the wheel mass.
Figure 9 shows that to increase the first natural
frequency, it is necessary to increase the bending stiff-
ness around the X axis. A solution to get this result
without varying the mass is to pass from a full spoke
section to a hallow section. With this strategy, it is
possible to increase the inertia of the section and the
bending stiffness without building up the mass.
Figure 10 shows the main parameters that can be
modified in the optimisation based on hallow spokes.
The spoke length (b) is kept constant and equal to
12 mm (as obtained in step 3). The variable parameters
are now the spoke thickness (a) and the width (h).
Equation (1) allows determining the spoke thick-
ness a
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ð2b þ 2hÞ  ð2b þ 2hÞ2  16A
¼ ð1Þ
8
where A is the section area.
By modifying the width value h, it is possible to get
the value of the thickness that allows to keep under
control the mass guaranteeing the increase of the iner-
tia of the spokes section and so the increase of the first
natural frequency.
In this case of study, the output parameters from
the phase 4 are reported in Figure 11, where the area
of the constant hallow spoke is equal to 33 mm2.
Phase 5. The first step of this phase (as in Phase 4) is to
perform a modal analysis of the output configuration
from phase 4 (Figure 11), in order to monitor the
dynamic behaviour of the wheel.
6 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
Figure 7. Maximum Von Mises equivalent stress (left) and first frequency of the wheel versus spokes number.
Figure 8. Spokes geometry modification within phase 3.
Figure 9. First wheel mode shape (wheel obtained at the end
of step 3).
From this analysis, the spokes area where the max-
imum deflection due to first mode shape is reached is
pointed out (in this example near the rim, as shown in
Figure 12). Then, a strategy to further increase the
first natural frequency without exceeding the target
mass has to be identified.
Analysing the test case considered in this work, it
has been observed the necessity to increase the spokes
bending stiffness around the X axis near the rim.
Therefore, spokes have been divided in two parts
introducing the new geometrical parameters shown
in Figure 13 (h is the spoke first part width; a is the
spoke first part thickness; H is the spoke second part
width; a0 is the spoke second part thickness).
Figure 13 shows also the holes near the hub to
allow the discharge of the metal powders from the
inner of the spokes at the end of the AM process.
Near the hub, the hallow section of the spokes was
realised with h ¼ 22 mm, a ¼ 0.5 mm and with an area
A ¼ 33 mm2, as in the output configuration of the
fourth phase.
Near the rim, a higher bending stiffness is requested
and so the parameters of this part were found through
an iteration conduct using the equation (1) modified
with the parameters H, a0 and A0 (A0 is the area of
the hallow section of the spokes part near the rim).
After this, the iteration has been conducted fixed b
and A0 and increasing H until the gear mass over-
comes the reference target.
Then stress analysis has been performed to check
the wheel strength.
At the end of this process, the last iteration that
returns the gear mass lower than the target value was
adopted, obtaining the following wheel parameters:
. b ¼ 12 mm
. h ¼ 22 mm
. a ¼ 0.5 mm
. H ¼ 28 mm
. a0 ¼ 0.835 mm
Mura et al. 7

Figure 10. Wheel geometrical parameters to be modified within phase 4.

Figure 11. Wheel geometry output of phase 4.

Figure 13. Wheel geometrical parameters to be modified

within phase 5.

Phase 6. In this last phase, the transmission error of

Figure 12. First wheel mode shape (wheel obtained at the
end of step 4).
the wheel obtained from phase 5 has been calculated
by means of Romax software.
Transmission error has been obtained considering
the meshing between the optimised gear and its pinion
(modulus ¼ 4-mm teeth number ¼ 26) as shown in
Figure 14.
8 Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)

If the transmission error value is lower than the Figure 15 shows the results of the static analysis
desired value the process is finished, otherwise the conducted respectively on the reference wheel, on the
procedure restart from phase 2. output from phase 4 and from phase 5, respectively.
In particular, maximum equivalent Von Mises stresses
for each configuration have been obtained in order to
Results
calculate the SF respect to the yield stress of the wheel
In this section, the performance of the wheels config- material.
uration obtained from phase 4 and 5 has been com- Figure 16 shows the first mode shape for the three
pared with the reference wheel. wheel configurations (reference wheel, wheel from
Table 2 resumes the results in terms of mass, static phase 4 and wheel from phase 5).
SF and first natural frequency. The results highlight that using the methodology
presented in this paper, it is possible to obtain an opti-
mised wheel configuration that reduces the wheel mass
(approximately 200 g) and increases the first natural
frequency (about 2.8 times higher than the reference
wheel).
After that, a good wheel geometry that may satisfy
the desired performance (in terms of frequency, mass
reduction and strength) has been obtained from Phase
5 (see Table 2).
From here on, the wheel model designed from
Phase 5 has been chosen as optimised configuration.
Then, noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) ana-
lysis has been performed on the optimised wheel
considering the gears transmission error as the
source of vibrations and noise.
Figure 17 shows the comparison between the trans-
mission error for the reference wheel and for the opti-
mised wheel.
Using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), the trend
Figure 14. Gear pair configuration used to calculate the of the transmission error has been decomposed in its
transmission error. harmonics. The result in terms of harmonic amplitude
is shown in Figure 18.
Results from Figure 18 show a reduction of the
displacement amplitude of the optimised wheel
Table 2. Wheel performance modification during the opti-
misation procedure. respect to the original one. This reduction is clearly
visible in the first harmonic with a displacement
1 Natural reduction of about 5.5%.
Configuration Mass [kg] SF frequency [Hz] Selecting the first harmonic of the transmission
Reference wheel 12.84 3 209.7 error, the system has been excited with a harmonic
force applied along the line of action, obtained multi-
Output from phase 4 11.98 1.6 487.9
plying the first harmonic with the stiffness derived
Output from phase 5 12.60 2.1 586.7
from a static reduction in the direction of the line of
(final solution)
action.

Figure 15. Static analysis of reference wheel, wheel form phase 4 and wheel form phase 5.
Mura et al. 9

Figure 16. Mode shapes of reference wheel, wheel form phase 4 and wheel form phase 5.

Figure 17. Comparison between the transmission error of the reference wheel and optimised wheel.

Figure 18. Transmission error FFT.

10
Figure 19. Dynamic force on the wheel left bearing.
Figure 20. Dynamic force on the wheel right bearing.
This harmonic force will be transferred to the hous-
ing through the bearings on which a harmonic force
will be discharged.
In this paper, the amplitude of the harmonic force
discharged on the bearings has been considered to
compare the performance in terms of vibration and
noise, as the bearing are the components that connect
the gear set to the housing and so they are the medium
to which the vibration are transmitted to the whole
mechanical system.
A reduction of the amplitude of the forces dis-
charged on the bearings will induce a reduction of
the housing vibration and noise.
Figures 19 and 20 show the trend of the force amp-
litude discharged respectively on the left (Figure 19)
and on the right (Figure 20) bearing of the conduct
Proc IMechE Part C: J Mechanical Engineering Science 0(0)
shaft versus the rotation speed for the reference wheel
and for the optimised one (output methodology
configuration).
Results show that, using the optimised wheel
geometry obtained by the proposed design procedure,
it is possible to obtain a reduction of the amplitude of
the force discharged on both left and right bearings
and a consequent reduction of the system vibrations
and noise. Moreover a small mass reduction respect to
that of the reference wheel has been obtained.
Finally, as explained in the previous sections, the
wheel optimisation procedure is intended to be used
to design wheel to be produced by AM techniques
because of the output wheel geometries can be quite
complicated and almost impossible to be manufactured
by means of standard material removing processes.
Mura et al.
Figure 21. Holes added to allow metal powder to be removed from the spokes cavities.
Nevertheless, some attention has to be paid in the
wheel design in order to allow the manufacturing by
AM techniques.
In particular, considering the final design obtained
from the test case studied in this work, some holes
have to be added to allow the metal powder to exit
from the spokes after the AM process.
Figure 21 shows these holes placed at the bottom
of the spokes near the wheel hub; this solution allows
removing the metal powder from the spokes cavity
without affecting the wheel strength.
Conclusion
In this paper, an optimisation methodology to improve
lightweight gear performance by means of AM tech-
niques has been presented. In particular, the design
procedure is intended to minimise the wheel weight
and to increase the frequency operating range in
order to reduce vibrations and generated noise.
To get these aims, the optimisation procedure acts
on the wheel mass distribution: the material is distrib-
uted where it allows increasing the wheel stiffness, and
therefore increasing wheel natural frequency, in this
way it is possible also to reduce the wheel weight.
As a matter of fact, to improve the design of a thin
rim gear, minimising both weight and transmission
error is the requested target to be taken into account,
always guaranteeing static and fatigue strength of the
component.
To produce such optimised wheel, AM techniques
have to be used as the resulting geometries can be
quite complicated and nearly impossible to be manu-
factured by standard material removal processes.
The optimisation procedure has been validated in this
paper considering a real case of a lightweight gear used
in an airplane reduction gearbox. Step by step, the opti-
misation procedure has been applied to this component,
until a final wheel configuration has been reached.
An optimised spoke wheel has been obtained and
the final targets have been guaranteed. In particular,
11
the procedure allowed the wheel weight reduction and
the increase in wheel dynamic performance (reduction
of gear transmission error, vibrations and noise).
On the basis of the obtained results, it is possible to
conclude that AM techniques can allow benefits in
gears performance, if applied to gears productions.
Weak points of AM techniques applied to mech-
anical components as lightweight gears are the struc-
tural characteristics of the material, the residual
stresses due to the manufacturing process and the sur-
face finish. All these specific aspects make of primary
importance the verification of static strength and fati-
gue durability.
Therefore, future development will be the experi-
mental testing of the optimised gears produced by
AM techniques, in order to verify the actual wheel
performance and also to evaluate both fatigue and
static strength. Another point to be investigated in
future work is the effect of new wheel geometries on
load distribution among and along the instantan-
eously engaged tooth pairs.
Acknowledgement
The authors thank Romax Technology Limited for the help
in performing numerical simulations.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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Appendix
Notation
A spoke section area
A0 area of the spoke hallow near the rim
b spokes depth
h spoke thickness
H spoke second part width
i number of spoke pairs
itot total transmission ratio
SF safety factor
a spoke thickness
a0 spoke second part thickness
s_max_VM maximum Von Mises stress