Effects of gearbox housing flexibility on dynamic characteristics of gear transmission system

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The lightweight design of the gear system is the current tendency. The gearbox housing is modeled as a rigid body and is neglected in the gear dynamic analysis. It is of great significance to introduce the gearbox housing flexibility into the dynamic analysis and analyze the influence of the gearbox housing flexibility on the dynamic behaviors of the gear transmission system, as this can provide important instructions for the lightweight structure design of the housing. The gear–rotor–bearing model and the gear–rotor–bearing–housing model are established by the finite element node method. A Timoshenko beam element is used to represent the shafts. To illustrate the housing effect, two kinds of housing model are established: one tends to be rigid and the other to be flexible and lighter. The housings are simplified as a super element obtained by the dynamic substructure method. Natural frequencies and dynamic responses are illustrated to indicate the effects of housing flexibility. Comparisons of numerical results show that the rigid housing can be neglected for its little effect on the dynamic analysis. The flexibility of the housing slightly reduces the natural frequencies of the gear transmission system, and the maximum reduction is 6.05%. Meanwhile, the amplitudes of the first two resonance peaks of the dynamic transmission error decrease by 9.5% and 5.05%. Besides, more response peaks emerge at higher speeds when the flexibility of housing increases. The complete phenomena of dynamic behaviors of the gear transmission system can be obtained by considering the housing flexibility.