A Gear Load Distribution Model for a Planetary Gear Set With a Flexible Ring Gear Having External Splines

Abstract

In order to accurately predict ring gear deformations and to investigate the effects of ring gear flexibility on quasi-static behaviors of planetary gear sets, a complete load distribution model of planetary gear sets having flexible ring gears will be formulated here based on the baseline model proposed by the same authors (Hu, Y., Talbot, D., and Kahraman, A., 2018, “A Load Distribution Model for Planetary Gear Sets,” ASME J. Mech. Des., 140(5), p. 053302). Direct comparisons to published experiments are provided to assess the accuracy of the proposed load distribution methodology. Example analyses with flexible ring gear rims are performed indicating that ring gear flexibility could influence gear mesh-level and planetary gear set system-level behaviors. Influence of spline supporting a ring gear is also investigated revealing that positions of planet branches with respect to external splines could influence ring deflections and resultant gear mesh load distributions.