Influence of support stiffness on vibrations of a planet gear system considering ring with flexible support

Planet gear systems(PGSs)are key components of transmission mechanisms.Structural and material characteristics of gearbox and shaft can affect the support stiffness and vibrations of PGSs.The ring gear flexibility should affect the vibrations of PGSs too.However,most previous work did not completely consider the effects of the ring gear flexibility on the vibrations of PGSs and flexible supports of ring and sun gears.Thus,this paper presents a flexible-rigid coupling multi-body dynamic(FMBD)model for a PGS with the flexible supports and ring gear flexibility.A finite element model of ring gear is established to formulate the ring gear flexibility.The influences of clearance and damping of planet bearings on the vibrations of PGS are considered.The effects of flexible supports and ring gear flexibility on the vibrations of PGS under different moment and speed conditions are studied.The statistical parameters and peak frequencies of PGS from the proposed FMBD and previous rigid multi-body dynamic(RMBD)models are compared.The results denote that the flexible support has a great effect on the vibrations of PGS.This paper can provide some guidance for the support structure design and vibration control for PGSs.

A NEW STATIC MECHANICS MODEL TO SOLVE CONTACT PROBLEMS IN MECHANICAL SYSTEMS

The coupling of the local contact problems between the components and the deformation of the components in the mechanical system were discovered.A series of coordinate systems have been founded to describe the mechanical system with the contact problems.The method of isolating the boundary of contact body from others has been used to describe the constraint between the contacting points.A more generalized static mechanics model of the mechanical system with the contact problems has been founded through the principle of virtual work.As an application,the model was used to study the multi_teeth engagement problems in the inner meshed planet gear systems.The stress distribution of contact gears was got.A test has verified that the static contact model and the computational method are right.

Fault feature extraction of planet gear in wind turbine gearbox based on spectral kurtosis and time wavelet energy spectrum

Planetary transmission plays a vital role in wind turbine drivetrains, and its fault diagnosis has been an important and challenging issue. Owing to the complicated and coupled vibration source, time-variant vibration transfer path, and heavy background noise masking effect, the vibration signal of planet gear in wind turbine gearboxes exhibits several unique characteristics： Complex frequency components, low signal-to-noise ratio, and weak fault feature. In this sense, the periodic impulsive components induced by a localized defect are hard to extract, and the fault detection of planet gear in wind turbines remains to be a challenging research work. Aiming to extract the fault feature of planet gear effectively, we propose a novel feature extraction method based on spectral kurtosis and time wavelet energy spectrum （SK-TWES） in the paper. Firstly, the spectral kurtosis （SK） and kurtogram of raw vibration signals are computed and exploited to select the optimal filtering parameter for the subsequent band-pass filtering. Then, the band-pass filtering is applied to extrude periodic transient impulses using the optimal frequency band in which the corresponding SK value is maximal. Finally, the time wavelet energy spectrum analysis is performed on the filtered signal, selecting Morlet wavelet as the mother wavelet which possesses a high similarity to the impulsive components. The experimental signals collected from the wind turbine gearbox test rig demonstrate that the proposed method is effective at the feature extraction and fault diagnosis for the planet gear with a localized defect.

Design and experiment of double planet carrier planetary gear flower transplanting mechanism

At present,there is a lack of miniaturized and highly reliable plug seedling transplanting mechanism in flowerpots planting operation,in order to meet the needs of large displacement and high vertical uprightness for flower transplanting,the paper combined the transmission characteristics of the non-circular gear planetary gear train with the swing flexibility of the cam gear and proposed a double planet carrier planetary gear transplanting mechanism.The linkage of the mechanism performs variable speed rotation relative to the first planet carrier,the linkage serves as the second planet carrier,and the transplanting arm performs variable speed swing relative to the linkage.A mathematical model of a single planetary carrier mechanism was first established using the method of open linkage group solution domain synthesis,then established the kinematic equations of the second planet carrier and the transplanting arm.The two parts are combined to form the mathematical solution model of the proposed mechanism.The initial trajectory was planned according to the trajectory requirements of seedlings planting operation,the non-circular gear pitch curve in the first planet carrier was obtained and the length of the first planet carrier is 120 mm.Then using the key points’angular deviation between the initial trajectory and the improved trajectory to obtain the cam parameters which driving the transplant arm,consequently determined the length of the second planet carrier is 69.25 mm and the length of the transplant arm is 112.4 mm.Finally,the prototype of the mechanism was manufactured,and the test verified the correctness of the design method of the double planet carrier planetary gear flower potting transplanting mechanism.The transplanting success rate of this mechanism reached 94.43%,and the plug seedlings planted in flowerpots had high uprightness.This research can provide a reference for the automatic development of research on flower transplanting machines.