Study on the vibration characteristics of toroidal involute worm meshing with different plastic gears

Toroidal involute worm (TI worm) meshing with plastic gear can serve as an efficient reducer for applications in smart home and automatic driving, owing to its stable transmission and high carrying capacity. This necessitates an in-depth analysis of the vibration and noise associated with TI worm drive to enhance the comfort in these scenarios. Utilizing the meshing characteristics of TI worm drive, a dynamic model including nonlinear factors such as time-varying meshing stiffness and meshing damping is established. The dynamic characteristics of TI worm meshing with different plastic helical gears are compared and analyzed. The TI worm drive experiments are carried out, and vibration signals are collected though accelerometers. The numerical analysis results align with the experimental findings. The results reveal that TI worm meshing with different plastics exhibits the maximum vibration amplitude in the axial direction of the worm. Specifically, PEEK demonstrates the highest amplitude, followed by POM, while Nylon has the smallest vibration amplitude. These findings serve as a valuable reference for mitigating vibration and noise of TI worm drives.