AGMA 18FTM03 PDF

Liftboats or Jack-up oil rigs are essential for the oil and gas industry. The subsystem: rack, pinion, gearbox and brake within the system lift boat has specific requirements that need to be customized appropriately. This paper shall outline the design process of a rack-and-pinion system and show how the design can be optimized. The nature of gear design is that it has multiple parameters from which the gear designer can choose. While some are beneficial, some can negatively impact the system. Therefore, a structured approach needs to be taken in order to define a custom pinion and rack for a liftboat. The influence of major gear parameters, such as modul, profile shift coefficient, as well as the pressure angle, will be analyzed, and their impact on the design discussed. Based on the previous discussion, a gear design will be selected and analyzed. As a next step in the design process, the optimization phase will show how to reduce the contact stress in the system, as well as change from an involute profile into a multi-radii pinion design. Both pinion designs will be compared and validated with FEA – Finite element analyses calculation to show and validate the improvement. The final design will not only extend the life of the product, it will save the customer a great deal of time and financial resources, as it will last longer in service. This paper can be used as a guideline and starting point to design a rack and pinion for offshore jacking applications.