Investigation of the effect of manufacturing errors on dynamic characteristics of herringbone planetary gear trains

A new and generalized dynamic model for a herringbone planetary gear train (HPGT) is proposed to investigate the forced vibration performances by utilizing the lumped-parameter approach. The developed model takes manufacturing eccentric errors and tooth profile errors into consideration, and can be used for the vibration performance analysis of the HPGT with different types of manufacturing errors and arbitrary number of planets. The forced vibration performances of an HPGT with three planets are numerically computed with the model presented, and are analyzed respectively in time domain and frequency domain. The effects of manufacturing errors such as the sun gear eccentric error on dynamic characteristics are discussed. Results show that manufacturing error excitations have a significant effect on dynamic characteristics of HPGT.