Abstract
Solar array drive assembly is an important part of the spacecraft. It is used to rotate the solar panels. The gear assembly in solar array drive assembly plays a key role in transferring power safely. Nonlinear behavior of gear assembly, like the chaotic motion, can highly affect the stability and operating life of solar array drive assembly. Clearances in gear assembly which were neglected for simplification in past years have increased the risk of failure and become a problem in accurate control. To investigate the clearances effect on nonlinear behavior, this paper establishes a new dynamic model of the gear assembly with bilateral clearances. The main difference comparing to general spur gears is its unique hysteresis stiffness may also influence the clearance effects. Transformation of the hysteresis loop is observed from theoretical equations using different parameters. Bifurcations and chaotic analysis of the system are carried out by numerical simulations in this study. The results show that the variation of clearances may induce the chaotic behavior into gear transmission even when the primary response is stable. When the system step into the chaotic region, it has a high risk of unstable vibration and fuzzy output. The influence of excitation frequency on the chaotic motion of the system is also provided. Chaos thresholds are calculated to avoid nonlinear behavior of the system in design and control. This study makes it possible to predict the unstable clearance interval in this system and avoid the system stepping into chaotic motion. Analyzing and predicting the chaotic behaviors can contribute to the further studies on design and control of the solar array drive assembly.
Highlights
Chaotic behavior of dynamical systems is one of the challenges in the satellites area
In order to investigate the dynamic behavior of the gear assembly in Solar array drive assembly (SADA), a new single-degree-of freedom model is proposed in Fig. 1, in which bilateral clearances are taken into consideration
The results indicate that the response of the system is periodic under high excitation frequency, it tends to result in chaotic behavior under lower excitation
Summary
Chaotic behavior of dynamical systems is one of the challenges in the satellites area. Researches on the stress-strain analysis of the gear assembly on SADA have been developed for years. There are few previous researches on the clearance effects of the gear assembly on SADA. The gear assembly in SADA needs to consider the effects of clearance and hysteresis that impact each other. This study is aimed at analyzing the chaotic behavior of a gear assembly in SADA considering bilateral clearances. This study attempted to set up an analytical model to investigate the nonlinear chaotic behavior of gear assembly for design. The objectives of this study are a) propose a new dynamic model of the gear assembly with bilateral clearances; b) analyze the effects of clearances on the bifurcation and chaotic behavior under low frequency condition for space environment
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