Abstract:To improve rubber roller′s performance in rail transportation, a power drive mechanism for rubber roller was designed by using linkages and differential bevel gears for the purpose of adjusting vertical pressure automatically to reasonable value according to the driving force and achieving torque equalization and differential speed. In the experiment, Abaqus was applied to conduct dynamic simulation of rubber roller in the rolling process, which was to study effect of the mechanism on rubber roller.In the simulation,Mooney-Rivlin model and nonlinear contact algorithm,both from Abaqus, were applied in numerical calculation. The relation between vertical pressure and power in rolling process and the relation between speed and efficiency were obtained from simulation. By contrast, it was found that the effect of the vertical pressure on power was basically in accordance with the experiment results. The experiment indicated that the efficiency of rubber roller was 0.7. The results showed that the mechanism can make good use of driving force of two rubber rollers, automatically adapt to curve and save energy in the state of low load, and thus it improves robber roller′s performance in orchard transportation.