Proceedings in Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, 10 April 2008

Influence of internal parametric and kinematic excitation on nonlinear

gearbox vibration
Miroslav Byrtus1,∗ and Vladimı́r Zeman1
1
Department of Mechanics, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of West Bohemia, Univerzitnı́ 22, 30614 Plzeň,
Czech Republic.

This paper deals with mathematical modelling of nonlinear vibration of large rotating shaft systems with gears and rolling-
element bearings. Gearing and bearing couplings bring into the system nonlinear phenomena like impact motions due to the
possibility of the mesh interruption. The motion of the system is influenced by the internal kinematic excitation in gearing and
by the parametric excitation caused by periodic change of number of teeth in gear meshing. The influence of simultaneous
internal kinematic and parametric excitation is investigated in dependence on revolutions of the driving shaft of a test-gearbox.
Copyright line will be provided by the publisher

1 Introduction
Many of mechanical systems include bearing and gearing couplings which constitute a source of kinematic and parametric
excitation due to the manufacturing inaccuracy and periodic change of number of teeth in gear meshing. In the past, analyzes
of large rotating systems including mentioned couplings were performed under the assumption of small deformation and
neglecting of parametric excitation [3]. This assumption is too simplifying, but enables to create linearized models of such
a system. To analyze real vibration of the systems, it is necessary to create nonlinear models of couplings which respect all
internal excitation sources and the possibility of gear mesh interruption.

2 Modelling of nonlinear gearbox vibration

Gearboxes represent a group falling within large rotating systems. In this contribution, we use the modal synthesis method
(MSM) to model large rotating systems. The MSM method was derived in [3] and is based on a suitable decomposition of
the system into subsystems and on separate modelling of couplings among them. Here, we use the MSM to create condensed
model of the whole system and the influence of coupling nonlinearities and parametric excitation is taken into account by
global coupling force vectors.
Let us suppose, the whole system is composed of S subsystems. Using the modal transformation defined by modal sub-
matrices of the mutually uncoupled, undamped and non-rotating subsystems, the mathematical model of the complex gearbox
can be written in the global condensed form [4]
   
ẍ(t) + B + ω0 G + V T (B B + B G ) V ẋ(t) + Λ + V T (K B + K G ) V x(t) =
XX Z
X  (1)
=VT (ci,j fi,j (q) + cax ax
i,j fi,j (q)) + cz FzN (t, q) + f G (t) + f E (t) ,
i j z=1

where B = diag(m V Ts B s m V s ), G = diag( ω ωs m T

0
V s Gs m V s ), V = diag(m V s ) are block diagonal matrices (ωS = 0
holds for the stator subsystem) and Λ = diag ( Λs ) is diagonal matrix composed of spectral submatrices m Λs ∈ Rms ,ms
m

of the subsystems, whereas s = 1, . . . , S. Matrices B B , B G , K B and K G are damping and stiffness matrices of bearing and
gear couplings. Vector f G (t) describes internal kinematic excitation in gearing and f E (t) = [ f E s (t) ] is the global vector
of external excitation. Nonlinear function FzN (t, q) includes the possibility of gear mesh interruption and simultaneously the
time dependent meshing stiffness caused by the change of number of teeth in gear meshing. Functions f i,j (q) and f ax i,j (q)
describe the nonlinear cause of stiffness in each of rolling-elements. Vectors ci,j , cax
i,j and c z describe geometrical parameters
of bearing couplings in radial and axial direction and of gear couplings, respectively, for more details see [4].
Particular courses of the mesh stiffness can be expressed in analytical way. Authors [1] proposed the gear mesh stiff-
ness kp (t) for a tooth pair p in the form
 
−1.8 2 1.8
kp (t) = km (t − tp ) + (t − tp ) + 0.55 for t ∈ htp , tp + εγ T i ,
(εγ T )2 εγ T (2)
kp (t) = 0 otherwise

∗ Corresponding author E-mail: byrtus@kme.zcu.cz, Phone: +420 377 632 315, Fax: +420 377 632 302

Copyright line will be provided by the publisher

2 PAMM header will be provided by the publisher

depending on the contact ratio εγ and on the period of the gear mesh. The parameter km represents maximal value of the gear
mesh stiffness of one tooth pair on the assumption that at time t = tp teeth enter into mesh and at t = tp + εγ T get out of the
mesh. The gear mesh period T = p2π zω
, with the parameter pz indicating the number of the teeth of the drive gear mounted on
a shaft rotating with angular velocity ω.
Fig. 1 shows dependence of the relative meshing stiffness kz /km on the path of the contact point in the front plane of
the gearing for different values of contact ratio εγ . The parameter kz,0 corresponds to the mean meshing stiffness. The bold
lines display the resulting gear mesh stiffness, whichPis given as a sum of the stiffnesses of teeth being in the gear mesh for a
given time. The resulting meshing stiffness kz (t) = p kp (t), is restricted to the tooth pairs in gear mesh for the given time t.
3
εγ = 1.8
3
εγ = 2.2 3
εγ = 2.8 3
εγ = 3
kz,0
2.5 2.5 kz,0 2.5 2.5
B3 B4
kz,0
kz /km

2 2 2 2 ω2 t − ∆ϕ2

1.5 1.5 1.5

kz,0 1.5
G
1 1 1 1 B1 B2
ω1 t + ∆ϕ1
0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5

0 0 0 0
0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3
ξ (path of contact point)
Fig. 1 Relative gear mesh stiffness for different values of contact Fig. 2 Scheme of the gearbox.
ratio εγ .

3 Vibration analysis of a test-gearbox

Generally, the mathematical model of a gear drive is strongly nonlinear due to the possibility of gear mesh interruption and
due to nonlinear bearing couplings respecting loss of contact in arbitrary contact point of the rolling-element in dependence
on position of journal centre. The main source of excitation in the test-gearbox, see fig. 2, the internal transmission error in
gearing G was approached by the Fourier series taking into account only first three amplitudes.
The aim of vibration analysis of the test gearbox is to provide the qualitative analysis of influence of the time-varying mesh-
ing stiffness on the behaviour of the complex nonlinear system. The model includes such nonlinear phenomena like impacts
in couplings [2]. These phenomena are sources of nonlinear effects in the response of the system, which is characterized by
bifurcation of solution in dependence on chosen operational parameters. In general, vibro-impact systems are characterized
by period-doubling scenario, when the number of period of the solution increases unexpectedly twice for a certain values of
operational parameters. This scenario could repeat till the motion becomes chaotic.
Bifurcation diagram shown in the fig. 3 is gained with considering the time-varying meshing stiffness which is in phase
with the kinematic transmission error. Black dots display minima and gray dots display maxima of gearing deformation per
one period of motion in dependence on revolutions of the drive shaft of the test-gearbox. The influence of the phase shift
π/2 between the internal kinematic transmission error in gearing and the time-varying meshing stiffness defined by on the
response of the test gearbox is shown in the fig. 4.
−5 −5
x 10 x 10
gearing deformation
gearing deformation

2 2

1 1

0 0

−1 −1

1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 3200 3400 1800 2000 2200 2400 2600 2800 3000 3200 3400
revolutions per minute revolutions per minute

Fig. 3 Bifurcation diagram of gearing deformation for time-varying Fig. 4 Bifurcation diagram of gearing deformation for time-varying
meshing stiffness without the phase shift. meshing stiffness with the phase shift π/2.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the research project MSM 4977751303 of the Ministry of Education,Youth and Sports
of the Czech Republic.

References
[1] Y. Cai and T. Hayashi, The linear approximated equation of vibration of a pair of spur gears (Theory and experiment). in: Journal of
Mechanical Design, 116, 558-564 (1994).
[2] J. M. Thompson and H.B. Stewart, Nonlinear dynamics an chaos. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 2002.
[3] V. Zeman, Dynamics of rotating machines by the modal synthesis method, in: Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress IFToMM,
Oulu, Finland, June 20 – 24, 1999, pp. 1668-1673.
[4] V. Zeman and M. Byrtus, Mathematical modelling of gearbox nonlinear vibration. in: Proceedings of the The 12th World Congress in
Mechanism and Machine Science, Besanccon, France, 2007.

Copyright line will be provided by the publisher