Paper detail

Dispersion of critical rotational speeds of gearbox: effect of bearings stiffnesses

Noise measurement on a population of a gearbox manufactured in large number reveals a high variability principally due to tolerances on each design parameter of the gear. Gearbox noise results mainly from vibration of its housing excited by the transmission error. High dynamic mesh load, high vibratory response of housing and high acoustic level of the gearbox can be observed for some critical rotational speeds. These ones correspond to excitation in a resonant manner of some particular modes which store a high potential energy at the meshing stiffness. Variability of the associated critical modes depend on tolerances affected to gear design parameters. It also depends on bearings stiffnesses dispersion. The physical origins of the bearings stiffnesses variability are preloads. Bearings stiffnesses and tolerances affect the characteristics of the meshing stiffness and the dynamic transfer from dynamic meshing force to the housing vibratory response. The purpose of this paper is to study effect of the bearings stiffnesses variability by estimating the first two moments of statistical distribution of critical modes.