A Procedure for Determining the Efficiency of a Continuously Variable Transmission

This work presents a procedure for estimating the efficiency of a new type of continuously variable transmission [CVT]. It is shown that the analysis of this transmission in steady-state conditions may be reduced to the analysis of its equivalent planetary gear train. This is the planetary gear train that has the same structure as that of the CVT and whose gear ratios have been obtained by averaging the original power and torque equations. The analytical expression of the efficiency can be obtained in a fairly systematic way. Such an expression accounts only for the gear mesh losses.