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2018-28-0027 Published 09 Jul 2018

Finite Element Simulation and Validation

of Planetary Gear System
Sonu Paroche, Himanshu Deshmukh, Suresh Kumar Kandreegula, and Alok Muley VE Commercial Vehicles Ltd

Citation: Paroche, S., Deshmukh, H., Kandreegula, S.K., and Muley, A., “Finite Element Simulation and Validation of Planetary Gear
System,” SAE Technical Paper 2018-28-0027, 2018, doi:10.4271/2018-28-0027.

Abstract
concept level to get the desired reduction of speed. Then

T
he planetary gear system is a critical component in
speed reduction of gear system. It consists of a ring
gear, set of planetary gears, a sun gear and a carrier.
It is mainly used in high speed reduction transmission.
More speed variation can be achieved using this system
with same number of gears. This speed reduction is based
on the number of teeth in each gear. The size of new system
is compact. A theoretical calculation is performed at
the planetary gear system is simulated using ANSYS
software for new development transmission system. The
final validation is done with the testing of physical parts.
This concept is implemented in 9speed transmission
system. Similar concept is in development for the hub
reduction with planetary gears. The maximum 3.67 reduc-
tion is achieved with planetary system. The stresses in each
pin is calculated using FEA.

Keywords
Planetary gear system, FEA, Speed reduction

Introduction
the dynamic behavior of planetary gear set. Parker et al. has

T
ransmission is one of the essential part of a vehicles. done the dynamic study of planetary gear considering a spur
Its act a link between power transmissions from engine gear and bearing clearance involving tooth welding and bearing
to the axle. In recent development of the vehicle, it is clearance nonlinearity [2].
highly recommended to design a robust transmission which Ajit Bodas et  al. presented a state of the art contact
can transmit the more power with less number of the compo- mechanics model of planetary gear set to study the effect of a
nents. The torque reduction capacity is the key parameter for
any transmission system. The torque reduction can
be achieved with the changing the gear teeth ratio. Further  FIGURE 1   General Representation of a Planetary System
speed can be reduced using a different combination of gear
pairs. For a compact system a planetary gear system is used
for various speed reduction. Figure 1 illustrate the generalize
view of the planetary system. The major gain from the plan-
etary gear is to divide the torque in various combinations of
gear pair. The number of planet gears depends of the output
requirements. H. ligata et al. studied hoop strain experi-
mental for a 4-pinion planetary gear set having no carrier
error [1].
Planetary gear system is less costly if it is tooled properly.
These systems are usually smaller than the conventional
gearbox and having higher reduction ratio and high radial load
on output shaft. This makes this system lighter and compact
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and also the operation is less noisy. So the system is fulfilling

the need of light weight construction which is having high load
capacity and power density and meeting the expectation of
good reliability of gear. Lots of studies has been done to analyze

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2 FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION AND VALIDATION OF PLANETARY GEAR SYSTEM

number of manufacturing and assembly related carrier and

gear errors on the load sharing amongst the planets [3]. Finite Element Modeling
To define speed relationship between the planetary gears
is very difficult because planetary gears also rotate about their The CAD is modeled using PTC Creo software. The final
own axis. The speed reduction can be done with different model is exported as an Initial Graphics Exchange
combination of connection for a planetary system. All combi- Specification (IGES/STEP) format and imported into finite
nation may not require for this system but some combinations element analysis software ANSYS Workbench. The critical
are very useful. A single equation can be derived for all combi- components are meshed with small element size. A second
nation to determine all speed reduction. order elements are used for meshing these components to
There are three methods to determine the speed ratio in capture the accurate geometry. The meshed model is solved
a epicyclic gear train - in ANSYS workbench environment itself. The results are
compared with VECV standard durability simulations
a) Instant center targets and material strength.
b) Formula Hamand et  al. used the finite element approach
c) Tabulation for planetary system and correlated to the theoretical
calculations [6].
Huseyin et al. has studied on optimization of the plan- Vijaya et al. presented non-linear dynamic behavior of
etary gear train. The objective of their study is to keep the the spur planetary gear system [7].
minimum kinetic energy. While bending and contact stress
are considered as a design criterion [4].
Mesh Generation
3-D meshing is used for mesh generation of the planetary gear
Speed Reduction with set because 3-D mesh is more suitable for the solid parts with
Different Gears more than 6  mm thickness. The relevance center for the
component mesh is coarse and average element size is kept
Combination 5 mm. A very fine mesh has been done in planet carrier pins
and the area which surrounds the pin of the average element
size of 2 mm. For obtaining the optimum accuracy, the aspect
Generally planetary system consists of four parts,
ratio kept to near 1.1 at critical location. Minimum tet-collapse
Sun gear criteria are set to 0.5.
Planet gears
Ring gear & Carrier
Either of the component could be input or output. It Contact Details
depends on the component is stationary or made fix. The contact between the mating surfaces is summaries in
The planetary gears can be connected in different combi- Table 2. An asymmetric behavior is used for all the contact
nations. Each combination provides the particular speed ratio definition. The frictional contact definition is a non-linear
[5]. At a time, only two planetary drive component’s speed can contact problem due to change in status. Best possible combi-
be controlled. The speed reduction is achieved by constraining nation of contact formulation and behavior are used to
one of the drive. Similarly, different speed combinations can minimize the convergence difficulties.
be made with constraining other drive as shown in Table 1. Figure 2 shows the connections between parts. A fric-
tional contact is used at every connection. The worst case
analysis is done using maximum and minimum interference/
clearance combinations wherever applicable. A spring pin also
TABLE 1  Speed Reduction Ratio with Different used to avoid the relative motion between carrier and
Input Conditions carrier pin.
Input Fixed input Output Speed reduction ratio
S C R −a
R C S −1/a TABLE 2  Contact Details for FEA of Planetary System
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C S R a/(1 + a)
S.No. Interaction between Contact Type Algorithm used
R S C (1 + a)/a
1. planetary carrier and Bonded MPC
S R C (1 + a) cover
C R S 1/(1 + a) 2. cover and pin Frictional Augmented
Lagrange
© SAE International

Where,
3. planetary carrier and Frictional Augmented
S - Sun Gear
pin Lagrange
R - Ring Gear
4. planetary pin and Frictional Augmented
C - Carrier Shaft
‘a’ is ratio of number of teeth of ring gear to sun gear (R/S).
spring pin Lagrange
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FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION AND VALIDATION OF PLANETARY GEAR SYSTEM 3

 FIGURE 2   Contact Details of Planetary System TABLE 3  20MnCr5 Material Details

Chemical Case Harden Steel - 20MnCr5

Composition C Si Mn Cr
0.20 0.25 1.25 1.15
Mechanical Yield Tensile % Elongation Endurance
Properties Strength Strength Strength
(MPa) (MPa)
850 1200 10 540
Unit Physical Properties of 20MnCr5
Temperature °C 20 100 200 400 600
Young’s GPa 210 205 195 175 155
Modulus
Tangent GPa 80 78 75 67 59

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© SAE International

Modulus
Thermal W/(m.K) 41
Conductivity
Density Kg/m^3 7.85

Loading and Boundary Analysis Results

Conditions
The torque is applied to the sun gear as shown in Figure 3. The
companion flange bolt holes are fixed in all 6 degree of
freedom. Here the input torques is applied to the sun gear in
either of the direction which makes the sun gear to rotate in
its own axis. While the planet gear revolves around the sun
gear in the direction opposite to the sun gear when the ring
gear is fixed. The planet carrier is incorporated to hold the
planet gears by the use of pins and gives the output of the gear
box in the direction opposite to the sun gear. Tsai et al. has
studied the load sharing for planetary system [8].
Material Details
A high strength material (20MnCr5) is used for the planetary
carrier, cover and planetary pin. The detail material properties
are given in below Table 3.
The deformation plot of planetary system is shown in Figure 4.
The contour of deformation represents the behavior of the
rotation of sun gear correspondingly transformation of the
torque to the planet gears.
The deformation of carrier pin is shown in Figure 5. It
can be  observed that the carrier pins are bending. The
maximum deformation in the pins is occurred at the center.
At first cut the stresses in the pins and other components were
crossing the VECV design criteria. The critical locations are
identified with CAE analysis. After some design iterations,
the design of components is modified. The interference and
clearance value are optimized such that it gives the minimum
stress and meet the functional requirements. A maximum
radial clearance of 40 microns is recommended for
optimum design.
The stress plot of the pin is shown in Figure 6. The
maximum von-misses stress is coming at the oil hole location

 FIGURE 3   Loads and Boundary Conditions  FIGURE 4   Total Deformation Plot of Planetary System from
FEA analysis
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© SAE International

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4 FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION AND VALIDATION OF PLANETARY GEAR SYSTEM

 FIGURE 5   Carrier Pin Deformation Plot  FIGURE 7   Experimental Setup for Planetary Gear
Transmission A

© SAE International
© SAE International
 FIGURE 8   Experimental Setup for Planetary Gear
 FIGURE 6   Von-mises Stress Plot in Carrier Pins Transmission B

© SAE International
© SAE International

 FIGURE 9   Experimental Input Torque and RPM to the

Transmission System

due to bending of pin. The bending of pin is occurred because

of the clearance between pin and the planetary gears.
The analysis convergence and accuracy are checked with
the reactions at the boundary conditions.
© SAE International

Experimental Setup
Two different epicyclic gear box are used for experimentation.
It contains one sun gear, four planet gears and a ring gear. The
input power is given to the sun gear from the motor as shown
in Figure 7. In this combination, carrier shaft is an output
shaft. An axle is connected to the transmission. Two dyna-
mometers are attached to the axle along with load cells which
measure the torque. The dynamometer, motor & compete
system is mounted on the frame. This complete frame is bolted
to the ground with help of foundation bolts. Figure 8 shows
the similar test for another transmission system. The toque is
applied for some duration in a step by step as per VECV speci-
fied duty cycle.
Figure 9 shows the graph of input rpm and torque with
respect to the increased steps. The maximum torque cannot
be given at first step. This can be increased with some steps
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FINITE ELEMENT SIMULATION AND VALIDATION OF PLANETARY GEAR SYSTEM 5

or after some duration. The toque will further come down at 7. Ambarisha, V.K. and Parker, R.G., “Nonlinear Dynamics of
some value after 7th step depend on required duty cycle. Planetary Gears Using Analytical and Finite Element
Models,” Journal of sound and vibration 302(3):577-595, 2007.
8. Tsai, S. J., G. L. Hwang, and S. Y. Yeh. "An Analytical

Summary
Approach for Load Sharing Analysis of Planetary Gear
Drives." In 13th World Congress in Mechanism and Machine
Science, Guanajuato, México, pp. 19-25. 2011.
•• This study presents the planetary gear system used
in transmission system. A high gear ratio is achieved
using the planetary gear system. Due to planetary gear
system, the size of transmission system is very compact.
Contact Information
The overall weight of the transmission system Sonu Paroche, Deputy Manager - CAE-PDD
with planetary gears is less compared to the VE Commercial Vehicles Limited - INDIA
transmission system with simple gears mechanism for 09752030777
same gear ratio. sparoche@vecv.in
•• The FEA analysis of the planetary has been completed Suresh Kumar K, Sr. Manger - CAE-PDD
using commercial FE software ANSYS. The results are VE Commercial Vehicles Limited - INDIA
compared with the vehicle validation at rig test and 09893043617
followed by testing in the field. All the production skkandreegula@vecv.in.
planetary systems are implemented.
Alok Muley, Sr. Manger - Driveline-PDD
•• A finite element analysis methodology is developed, VE Commercial Vehicles Limited - INDIA
which reduce the product development time of the 08319851764
planetary gear system. amuley@vecv.in
•• It reduces the number of prototype for testing which
directly affect the cost for the company.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Mr. Sachin
References Agarwal, Senior Vice-President, Powertrain PDD, VE
Commercial Vehicles Ltd, for granting permission to publish
this work and his encouragement for taking stretch design
1. Singh, A., Kahraman, A., and Ligata, H., “Internal Gear target. Special thanks to Mr. Sanjay Pakale, Deputy General
Strains and Load Sharing in Planetary Transmissions: Model
Manager, Driveline for his guidance and continuous encour-
and Experiments,” Journal of Mechanical Design
agement to develop present work. Also, the contributions and
130(7):072602, 2008.
support of all CAD, CAE engineers and respective testing
2. Parker, R.G., Agashe, V., and Vijayakar, S.M., “Dynamic engineers are highly appreciated.
Response of a Planetary Gear System Using a Finite Element/
Contact Mechanics Model,” Journal of Mechanical Design
122(3):304-310, 2000. Definitions/Abbreviations
3. Bodas, A. and Kahraman, A., “Influence of Carrier and Gear
Manufacturing Errors on the Static Load Sharing Behavior FEA - Finite Element Analysis
of Planetary Gear Sets,” JSME International Journal Series C CAD - Computer aided design
Mechanical Systems, Machine Elements and Manufacturing
47(3):908-915, 2004. PTC - Parametric Technology Corporation
4. Filiz, İ.H., Olguner, S., and Evyapan, E., “A Study on IGES - The Initial Graphics Exchange Specification
Optimization of Planetary Gear Trains,” Acta Physica STEP - Standard for the exchange of product
Polonica, A 132(3), 2017. VECV - VE Commercial Vehicles Limited
5. Ferguson, R.J., “Short Cuts for Analyzing Planetary RPM - Revolutions per minute
Gearing,” Machine Design 55(12):55-58, 1983.
FE - Finite element
6. Hamand, Y.C. and Kalamkar, V., “Analysis of Stresses and
Deflection of Sun Gear by Theoretical and ANSYS Method,” PDD - Product design and development
Modern Mechanical Engineering 1(02):56, 2011. CAE - Computer aided engineering

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