Shaft Drive CVT: A New Type CVT Applying Crossed Axle Traction Drive

The crossed axle traction drive developed by the authors is applied to a new mechanism of CVT, the Shaft Drive CVT. The input and output shafts with conical disks are parallel and a idler shaft having conical rollers at both ends is placed perpendicular to the input/output shafts. This idler shaft transmits a torque from the input shaft to the output shaft and its movement produces the speed variation by changing the contact point between the input/output disks and the idler rollers. The purposes of this study are 1) to propose the new CVT mechanism, 2) to design a curved shape of disk to decrease an amount of spin caused by the movement of contact point, 3) to develop a prototype to confirm the CVT to work and to evaluate the effect of curved disk by means of a power transmission efficiency. The design procedure of shapes of disk and roller are shown by geometrical analysis. The amount of spin is reduced 80% using the proposed concave disk. The range of speed changing ratio of the prototype is 0.5 to 2. The efficiency of 80% was obtained in case of input torque 10 Nm at uniform rate by using the conical disks. The effectiveness of concave disk is evaluated by comparing the experimental results using the conical and concave disks, respectively.