Vibration-shock behavior analysis of compound planetary gear set based on harmonic balance method

Abstract

Due to the clearance between the mating gears, a dynamic load rises and causes tooth impact and vibration. In the compound planetary gear set, under the interaction of transmission error, meshing stiffness, support stiffness and backlash, the unilateral tooth impact could evolve into bilateral tooth impact, resulting in a worse dynamic behavior. This work reveals the influence of internal excitations and external excitations on vibration-shock behavior, and, for this purpose, a “purely torsional” lumped parameter dynamics model of compound planetary gear set is built and combined with a harmonic balance method. The steady dynamics response under the frequency domain and time domain is given by the numerical solving method, and the results indicated that the bilateral impact occurs due to the transmission error. To avoid the influence of transmission error on the impact at the resonance peak, the input speed of the compound planetary gear set should avoid the resonance range and harmonious response range. To improve the tooth surface contact by increasing the backlash, it is recommended to decrease the initial velocity to below ωmesh = 0.8.