Gear Design Optimization Algorithms: A Review

Gearing is one of the most efficient methods of transmitting power from a source to its application with or without change of speed or direction. Gears are round mechanical components with teeth arranged in their perimeter. Gear design is complex design that involves many design parameters and tables, finding an optimal or near optimal solution to this complex design is still a major challenge. Different optimization algorithms such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Simulated Annealing, Ant-Colony Optimization, and Neural Network etc., have been used for design optimization of the gear design problems. This paper focuses on the review of the optimization techniques used for gear design optimization with a view to identifying the best of them. Nowadays, the method used for the design optimization of gears is the evolutionary algorithm specifically the genetic algorithm which is based on the evolution idea of natural selection. The study revealed that GA. has the ability to find optimal solutions in a short time of computation by making a global search in a large search space. Keywords: Firefly Algorithm, Ant-Colony Optimization, Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm, Gear design, Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm