Causes of Microslip in a Continuously Variable Transmission

The continuously variable transmission (CVT) is a type of transmission that can adopt any arbitrary gear ratio. Whereas typical transmissions utilize toothed gears, the CVT employs a sphere in rolling contact with a set of rollers; loads applied to the CVT are supported across these rolling contacts, resulting in microslips of varying amounts at each contact area. In this paper, we describe the causes of microslips in the CVT and ways to lessen them through an alternative CVT design.