Application of Evolutionary Optimization Techniques in Reverse Engineering of Helical Gears: An Applied Study

Abstract

Reverse engineering plays an important role in the manufacturing and automobile industries in designing complicated spare parts, reducing actual production time, and allowing for multiple redesign possibilities, including shape alterations, different materials, and changes to other significant parameters of the component. Using reverse engineering methodology, damaged gears can be identified and modeled meticulously. Influential parameters can be obtained in the shortest time. Because most of the time it is impossible to solve gear-related inverse equations mathematically, metaheuristic methods can be used to reverse-engineer gears. This paper presents a methodology based on measurement over balls and span measurement along with evolutionary optimization techniques to determine the geometry of a pure involute of a cylindrical helical gear. Advanced optimization techniques, i.e., Grey Wolf Optimization, Whale Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, and Genetic Algorithm, were applied for the considered reverse engineering case, and the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed algorithms were compared. Confirmatory calculations and experiments reveal the remarkable efficiency of Grey Wolf Optimization and Particle Swarm Optimization techniques in the reverse engineering of helical gears compared to other techniques and in obtaining influential gear design parameters.