LOAD SHARING ANALYSIS OF PLANETARY GEAR BOX

One of the advantages of epicyclic transmissions is that the input torque is divided in a number of parallel paths. For n planet epicyclic system, each sun–planet–ring path is to transmit 1/n of the input torque. However, this is only true in the ideal case when there is equal load sharing between all the planets in the epicyclic system. Because of manufacturing errors, equal load sharing is not possible and the degree of inequality in load sharing has major role for gear system sizing, tolerancing schemes, and torque ratings. Therefore it is important to understand the fundamental cause of the unequal load sharing behavior in epicyclic gear sets. Load sharing behavior is associated with positional errors causing one or more planets to lead or lag the other planets. When the error is positive the planet with error lead the other planet while when the error is negative planet with error lags the other planet. Several manufacturing errors can introduce positional errors. Some of the common contributors are carrier pinhole position error, planet size variation, and run out of the gears. A set of precision planetary gear set is selected with the objectives of experimental and theoretical investigation of the load sharing behavior by introducing the position errors for the planets, the load shared by each planet is estimated by maximum stresses induced in each pin. The results of the experimentation are then validated with the FEM (Finite Element method) results