Planetary transmission load sharing: Manufacturing errors and system configuration study

This paper addresses the effect of manufacturing errors such as eccentricity and planet pin positioning errors on the quasi-static behavior of a 3 planet planetary transmission, taking into account different configurations regarding the bearing condition of the sun gear shaft. The aim of the paper is to shed light on some untouched aspects of the load sharing behavior of planetary transmissions, such as the effect of radial positioning errors of the planets when different pressure angles are used, and the impact of the different loadings per planet on the actual load per tooth. A modeling approach is employed, and physical explanations and simplified graphs are provided to help understand the behavior of the transmission when the sun is allowed to float and errors are introduced. The model used, developed by the authors and presented and validated in previous works, hybridizes analytical solutions with finite element models in order to compute the contact forces. The results obtained show that the teeth loads are much lower than expected compared to the planet uneven loads, both in the non-defected and defected transmission, and that radial positioning errors have non-negligible effect on the load sharing ratio under certain operating conditions. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.