Transmissions of Rotational Motions by Coupled Deformable Gears

Dynamical aspects of coupled dissipative gears were investigated numerically. We studied the transmissions of the rotational motions by coupled hard gears and those by coupled soft gears under a torque working on one of the gears. In particular, we considered the following two situations: P) the system contains a pair of gears, and T) the system contains three gears which form a regular triangle. If the system involves only hard gears which are coupled tightly, we obtain the trivial results that the transmissions of the rotational motions to other gears occur only in situation P). On the other hand, if the gears in the system are soft or coupled loosely, the transmissions of the rotational motions to other gears are observed only in situation T).