Experimental study on active vibration control of a gearbox system

An active internal gearbox structure is developed and evaluated experimentally to suppress gear pair vibration due to transmission error excitation. The approach is based on an active shaft transverse vibration control concept that was theoretically analyzed in an earlier study and determined to be one of the most feasible methods. The system comprises of a piezoelectric stack actuator for applying control forces to the shaft via a rolling element-bearing, and a highly efficient, enhanced delayed-x LMS control algorithm to generate the appropriate control signals. To avoid the aliasing effects of higher frequency signals and reduce the phase delay of conventional filters, a multi-rate minimum-phase low-pass digital filter is also integrated into the controller. The experimental results yield 8-13 dB attenuation in the gearbox housing vibration levels and correspondingly 5-8 dB reduction in measured gear whine noise levels at the first and second operating gear mesh frequencies.