Predicting the Effects of Transmission Housing Flexibility and Bearing Stiffness on Gear Mesh Misalignment and Transmission Error

The paper describes a simulation method to predict efficiently and accurately how changes to a transmission’s housing affect gear mesh misalignments. Two key elements of this analysis are described. A fully coupled non-linear algorithm to analyse the shaft/bearing/gear/housing hyperstatic system has been developed to analyze the non-linear components. Using MSC.Nastran, a reduced stiffness matrix superelement representing the transmission housing is derived. An investigation of the effects of stiffness of each of the components is presented using a case study. The results show that the inclusion of the interaction between the housing and internal components significantly affects the predictions for bearing life and gear mesh misalignments. This affects how the gear is modified to minimise transmission error and noise. The application of this technique at both concept and detail design stages is discussed. 1 Corresponding author. Tel +44 1636 614000, e-mail: [email protected]