Gearbox Noise and Vibration Prediction and Control

This paper will review practical techniques and procedures employed to quiet gearboxes and transmission units. The author prefers solving the gear noise problem at the very source to introduce an enclosure as a means to reduce radiated noise, which seems to be easy but its effect on the sound pressure level is small. The gearbox noise problem solution is focused on the improvement of gear design; on the verification of its effect on the radiated noise and the determination of the gears’ contribution to the truck’s or car’s overall noise levels and on the analytical and/or numerical computer-based tools needed to perform the signal processing and diagnostics of geared axis systems. All of the analytical methods are based on the time and frequency domain approach. Special care is addressed to the smoothness of the drive resulting from the transmission error variation during a mesh cycle. This paper will review the progress in technique of the gear angular vibration analysis and its effect on gear noise due to the self excited vibration. This presentation will include some examples of the use of such approaches in practical engineering problems.