Investigation of Gear Meshing Vibration and Meshing Impact Resonance Intensity Assessment

Gear drive is one of the most widely used transmission forms. Its vibration analysis plays an important role in design and operation. Considering the gear meshing resonance phenomenon (MRP), the paper analyzes the influences of rotating speed and load on meshing resonance intensity (MRI). Based on the gear meshing impact mechanism, meshing force variation during the engagement process were obtained. It was considered as meshing impacts exerted on the gear system. By comparing the maximum meshing force under different circumstances, it was found that rotating speeds and loads were positively related to meshing forces. The vibration signals with different load torques and rotating speeds obtained from the gear pair were analyzed. The experiment results showed that the intensity of meshing impact increased with the increases of both rotating speed and load. It was also observed that due to the MRP, the gear meshing frequency was modulated to the resonance frequency band as meshing impacts. Consequently, the resonance frequency band contained most of the energy of the meshing impact. An indicator called resonance energy ratio (RER) was defined to represent the proportion of resonance energy due to meshing impact. The simulation and experiment result show that the proposed RER indicator can well assess the intensity of the vibration. By comparing the RER values of 20 sets of gear vibration data, the influences of rotating speed and load on MRI were discussed. The result shows that the proposed method is helpful to the vibration assessment and condition monitoring in different operational states. Graphical Abstract Figure The calculation model of meshing force at (a) initial meshing point D and (b) an arbitrary m