Multi-body modelling of timing belt dynamics

Abstract

Although timing belt drives have recently been increasingly used in mechanical design, their behaviour is still considered to a large extent to be unpredictable, especially under varying operative conditions. The acoustic emission of the transmissions, above all, has been thoroughly investigated in past years, but noise still represents an unresolved problem for many applications and a concern for belt designers; therefore, the availability of good predictive models would be very useful for both design and application phases. The present work describes a multi-body numerical model that has been developed for the characterization of the dynamic behaviour of timing belt transmissions, with the final goal of assessing the acoustic radiation of a given design. Modelling and simulation have been performed by means of commercial software packages, but more additional programming was required to obtain dynamic models capable of simulating the complex behaviour of toothed belt transmissions. Several experimental tests have been performed to identify the many parameters that influence system dynamics and to validate the resulting computer aided engineering (CAE) model.