Effects of gear flexibility on the dynamic characteristics of spur and helical gear system

The gear foundation is commonly assumed to be a rigid body in analyzing the dynamic characteristics of the gear system. This modeling approach may not be appropriate for building the gear model with lightweight features. Therefore, this paper proposes a gear dynamic model considering the flexible gear. The shell element with gyroscopic effect is employed to establish the gear finite element model, retaining the gear foundation and teeth structure. The fixed interface modal synthesis method is used to improve computational efficiency. The proposed model is verified by comparing it with the results calculated by Ansys. Based on the proposed model, the effects of gear flexibility on the dynamic characteristics of the spur and helical gear system are investigated. Numerical results show that the developed model can degenerate into the classical gear dynamic model. Due to the assumption of the gear as rigid discs, the predicted resonance speed by the conventional gear dynamic model is larger than the proposed model. Gear flexibility affects the dynamic characteristics of the spur and helical gear system differently. It's worth noting that the dynamic axial meshing force can excite the nodal diameter vibration in the helical gear system. The proposed model provides the theoretical basis and optimization tools for the high-performance design and vibration and noise reduction of high-speed lightweight gear transmission systems.