Dynamic tooth loads of planetary gear sets having tooth profile wear

A computational model of a planetary gear set is employed to study the influence of surface wear on the dynamic behavior of a typical planetary gear set. The overall computational scheme combines a wear model that defines geometric description of contacting gear tooth surfaces having wear and a deformable-body dynamic model of a planetary gear set. The wear model employs a quasi-static gear contact model to compute contact pressures and Archard's wear model to determine the wear depth distributions. The worn surfaces are input into the dynamic model to quantify the impact of wear on gear tooth and mesh dynamic forces. The results on a planetary gear set having a fixed planet carrier indicates that the dynamic behavior is nonlinear due to tooth separations in its resonance regions. The results for worn gear surfaces indicate that surface wear has a significant influence in off-resonance speed ranges while its influence diminishes near resonance peaks primarily due to tooth separations. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.