A study on the bending stress of the hollow sun gear in a planetary gear train

Generally, planetary gear type traveling reduction gear is composed of multiple planetary gear stages and has a hollow sun gear in the last stage planetary gear. In designing reduction gear, it is important to evaluate accurately the bending stress at the tooth root of the sun gear as the sun gear is the weakest component in the reduction gear system. Although bending stress can be calculated easily using gear standard codes such as the American Gear Manufacturers Association (AGMA) and International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 6336 for almost all gears, meticulous calculation is needed for the hollow sun gear because of its low backup ratio (rim thickness divided by tooth height) and comparatively large root fillet radius. In this study, a finite element analysis (FEA) is carried out to investigate the effect of rim thickness and root fillet radius on bending stress at the tooth root of the hollow sun gear. In standard codes, bending stress at the tooth root is calculated linearly with a constant slope for the backup ratio below 1.2. However, the effect of the rim thickness on bending stress is more complex in the planetary gear system. Bending stresses calculated by FEA with various backup ratios and root filler radii are compared with the bending stresses calculated by the standard codes.