Effect of mesh phase on wave vibration of spur planetary ring gear

The distinctive wave vibration of a ring gear affected by mesh effect is investigated based on the inherent symmetry of spur planetary gears. Compared to prior analysis, this work mainly examines the forced flexural and extensional vibrations. The superposition principle and the Fourier series are introduced to jointly deal with the wave vibrations. The dynamics of the ring gear shows that the effect of the mesh phase on the wave vibration is mainly embodied by the specific relationships between the tooth number, the planet number, the largest common factor of them, the planets’ circumferential position, and the excited wave numbers in the typical rotational, translational and planet modes. For the equal systems, the three modes can be possibly excited depending on the specific mesh phase. And the dominant vibration orders of them are 0, 1 and 2, respectively. The non-zero lowest order is equal to the largest common factor of the two numbers. But for the diametrical ones, only the first two modes can be excited, and the dominant orders of them are 0 and 1, respectively. And the lowest non-zero wave number is 2 for even tooth number and 1 for odd tooth number. As a typical application, these relationships can be used to predict and suppress some potential wave resonances of the ring gear by optimizing the ring-planet mesh phase. The main results are demonstrated with finite element examples and comparisons with the existing literature.