Vibro-Acoustic Analysis of Geared Systems-Predicting and Controlling the Whining Noise

The main source of excitation in gearboxes is generated by the meshing process. It is usually assumed that static transmission error (STE) and gear mesh stiffness fluctuations are responsible of noise radiated by the gearbox. They generate dynamic mesh forces which are transmitted to the housing through wheel bodies, shafts and bearings. Housing vibratory state is directly related to the noise radiated from the gearbox (whining noise). This work presents an efficient method to reduce the whining noise The two main strategies are to reduce the excitation source and to play on the solid-borne transfer of the generated vibration. STE results from both tooth deflection (depending of the teeth compliance) and tooth micro-geometries (voluntary profile modifications and manufacturing errors). Teeth compliance matrices are computed from a previous finite elements modeling of each toothed wheel. Then, the static equilibrium of the gear pair is computed for a set of successive positions of the driving wheel, in order to estimate static transmission error fluctuations. Finally, gear mesh stiffness fluctuations is deduced from STE obtained for different applied loads. The micro-geometry is a lever to diminish the excitation. Thus, a robust optimization of the tooth profile modifications is presented in order to reduce the STE fluctuations. The dynamic response is obtained by solving the parametric equations of motion in the frequency domain using a spectral iterative scheme, which reduces considerably the computation time. Indeed, the proposed method is efficient enough to allow a dispersion analysis or parametric studies. The inputs are the excitation sources previously computed and the modal basis of the whole gearbox, obtained by a finite element method and including gears, shafts, bearings and housing. All the different parts of this global approach have been validated with comparison to experimental data, and lead to a satisfactory correlation.