Modelling of Gear Meshing: a Numerical Approach for Dynamic Behavior Estimation of Thin Gears

The paper deals with the numerical analysis of thin gears. In particular, a brief overview of literature modeling techniques is reported in order to understand the best way for analyzing the dynamic behavior of gears. Then a multibody commercial software is used for implementing different complexity levels of models. The study starts with a simplified model that considers rigid the gears and concentrates the stiffness in the contact between teeth. The second, and more complex, model considers the stiffness in the contact and adds the compliance of the teeth. Stiffness of tooth is depicted as a rotational stiffness placed at the tooth root. Then, the third model increases the complexity, in fact the second model is complicated introducing the compliance of the gear body. In order to do that, a modal analysis of the gears is conducted and the synthetized modal shapes of the gears are introduced in the multibody model. The comparison highlights how the dynamic behavior of thin gears is really important in the meshing force estimation, in fact the transmission error becomes more irregular and the contact forces increase. As a second aspect, this analysis emphasizes the influence of the contact damping and the contact friction in the backlash phenomenon