Vibration and sound-radiation analysis for designing a low-noise gearbox with a multi-stage helical gear system

A method for predicting gear noise from the vibration step to the sound-generation step of a complete gear system, including a gearbox, was developed. This method consists of three separate steps: gear-vibration analysis by an in-house program, gearbox-vibration analysis by an FEA program, and sound-radiation analysis by a commercial software. By using this method, it can obtain the vibration behavior of the gear and gearbox, and the distribution of the sound-pressure around the gearbox and identify the areas from which noise radiates intensely. To validate the method, we measured the displacement of a gear shaft, the acceleration of points on the surface of the gearbox, and the sound-pressure levels around the gearbox. The measured results agreed well with the corresponding calculations. According to the calculated noise, a low-noise gearbox was designed by adding ribs near the antinodes of the gearbox's vibration mode.