Chapter 7 Gear Train Analysis

Page 1

7.0 Introduction
7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
7.2 Simple Gear Trains
7.3 Compound Gear Trains
7.4 Epicyclic or Planetary Gear Trains
 7.0 Introduction
Page 2

Gear trains are widely used in all kinds of

mechanisms and machines, from can openers to
aircraft carriers.
Usually belt or chain drive mechanism.

Assembled gearboxes for particular ratios are stock

items.
Only consider the kinematics of gear tooth theory,
gear types, and the kinematic design of gearset and
gear train of simple, compound, reverted, and
epicyclic types.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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The angular velocity ratio between the gears of a gearset

remains constant throughout the mesh.
The angular velocity ratio (mv) is equal to the ratio of the
radius of the input gear to that of the output gear.
out r d
mv = = in = in
in rout dout
The torque ratio (mT) is to be the reciprocal of the
velocity ratio (mv)
in r d
mT = = out = out
out rin din

Thus a gearset is essentially a device to exchange torque

for velocity or vice versa.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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The positive or negative sign accounts for internal or external cylinder

sets.
An external set reverses the direction of rotation between the cylinders and
requires the negative sign.
An internal gearset or a belt or chain drive will have the same direction of
rotation on input and output shafts and require the positive sign.
The surfaces of the rolling cylinders will become the pitch circles, and
their diameters the pitch diameters of the gears.
The contact point between the cylinders lies on the line of centers and this
point is called the pitch point.
The gear tooth contours on mating teeth must be conjugates of one another.
The cycloid is used as a tooth form in watches and clocks, but most other
gears use the involute curve for their shape.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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The Involute Tooth Form

The involute is a curve that can be generated by
unwrapping a taut string from a cylinder (called the
evolute)
The string is always tangent to the cylinder.
The center of curvature of the involute is always at the
point of tangency of the string with the cylinder.
A tangent to the involute is then always normal to the
string, the length of which is the instantaneous radius
of curvature of the involute curve.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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The common normal of the tooth profiles, at all contact points within the mesh,
must always pass through a fixed point on the line of centers, called the pitch point.
Length of action, Z, defined by the intersections of the respective addendum circles
with the line of action.
2 2 2 2
Z= (r
p + a p ) ( rp cos ) + (r + a ) (r cos )
g g g C sin
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Pressure Angle
The pressure angle in a gearset is similar to that of the cam and
follower and is defined as the angle between the axis of
transmission or line of action (common normal) and the direction of
velocity at the pitch point.
Pressure angles of gearsets are standardized at a few values by the
gear manufacturers.
These are defined at the nominal center distance for the gearset as
cut.
The standard values are 14.5, 20, and 25 with 20 being the most
commonly used and 14.5 now being considered obsolete.
Gears to be run together must be cut to the same nominal pressure
angle.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Changing Center Distance

Limitations of manufacturing processes give a low
probability that we will be able to exactly achieve the
ideal center distance in every case.
More likely, there will be some error in the center
distance, even if small.
However, with an involute tooth form, center distance
errors do not affect the velocity ratio.
The pressure angle is affected by the change in center
distance.
The center distance increases, so will the pressure
angle and vice versa.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Backlash
Backlash is defined as the clearance between mating teeth measured at the
pitch circle.
As long as the gearset is run with a nonreversing torque, backlash should
not be a problem.
Backlash can cause undesirable positional error in some applications.
The tooth-to-tooth composite backlash tolerance is in the range of 0.0001
to 0.0007 in for precision gears.
The increase in angular backlash as a function of error in center distance is
approximately
tan
B = 43200 ( C ) minutes of arc
d
where = pressure angle, C = error in center distance, and d = ptich
diameter of the gear on the shaft where the backlash is measured.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Gear Tooth Nomenclature

 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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d
Circular pitch, pc = = m
N

Base pitch, pb = pc cos

d
Module, m =
N

Gear ratio, mG = mv or mG = mT , for mG 1

Z Z
Contact ratio, mp = =
pb m cos
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Gear Types
Spur, helical and herringbone gears

Worms and worm gears

Rack and pinion

Bevel and Hypoid gears

Noncircular gears

Belt and chain drives

 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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Example 9-1
Determine gear tooth and gear mesh parameters.
Problem:
Find the gear ratio, circular pitch, base pitch, pitch diameters, pitch
radii, center distance, addendum, dedendum, whole depth, clearance,
outside diameters, and contact ratio of a gearset wit the given
parameters. If the center distance is increased 2% what is the new
pressure angle and increase in backlash?
Given:
m=4mm, 20 pressure angle, 19-tooth pinion is meshed with a 37-tooth
gear.
Assume:
The tooth forms are standard AGMA full-depth involute profiles.
 7.1 The Fundamental Law of Gearing
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 7.2 Simple Gear Train
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A gear train is any collection of two or

more meshing gears.
A simple gear train is one in which each

shaft carries only one gear.

The velocity ratio mv (sometimes called

train ratio) for example

N 2 N 3 N 4 N 5 N
mv = = + 2
N 3 N 4 N 5 N 6 N6
N
= in
N out
 7.2 Simple Gear Train
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The numerical effects of all gears except the first and

last cancel out.
The train ratio is always just the ratio of the first gear
over the last.
Only sign of the overall ratio is affected by the
intermediate gears which are called idlers because
typically no power is taken from their shafts.
If the train are external and even number, the output
direction will be opposite that of the input.
If the train is an odd number of external gears, the
output will be in the same direction as the input.
 7.2 Simple Gear Train
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Thus, the external idler gear of any diameter can be

used to change the direction of the output gear without
affecting its velocity.
A single gearset of spur, helical, or beval gears is
usually limited to a ratio of about 10:1 simply because
the gearset will become very large, expensive, ad hard
to pakgage above that ratio if the pinion is kept above
the minimum numbers of teeth.
If the need is to connect two shafts that are far apart, a
simple train of many gears could be used but will be
more expensive than a chain or belt drive for the same
application.
 7.3 Compound Gear Trains
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To get a train ratio of greater

than about 10:1 with spur,
helical, or bevel gears (or any
combination thereof) it is
necessary to compound the train
(unleass epicylic train is used).
A compound train is one in
which at least one shaft carries
more than one gear.
This will be a parallel or series-parallel arrangement.
The train ratio, N 2 N 4
mv =
N 3 N 5
product of number of teeth on driver gears
mv =
product of number of teeth on driven gears
 7.3 Compound Gear Trains
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Design of compound gear trains

Problem:
Design a compound train for an exact train ratio of 180:1. Find a combination
of gears that will give that ratio.
Solution:
1. The first step is to determine how many stages, or gearsets, are
necessary. Simplicity is the mark of good design, so try the smallest
possibility first. Take the square root of 180, which is 13.416. So, two
stages each of that ratio will give approximately 180:1. However, this is
larger than our design limit of 10:1 for each stage, so try three stages.
The cube root of 180 is 5.646, well within 10, so three stages will do.
2. If we can find some integer ratio of gear teeth that will yield 5.646:1, we
can simply use three of them to design our gearbox. Using a lower limit
of 12 teeth for the pinion and trying several possibilities we get the
gearsets shown in Table 9-6 as possibilities.
 7.3 Compound Gear Trains
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Design of compound gear trains

3. The number of gear teeth obviously must be an integer.
The closest to an integer in Table 9-6 is the 79.05 result.
Thus a 79:14 gearset comes closest to the desired ratio.
Applying this ratio to all three stages will yield train ratio
of (79/14)3 =179.68:1, which is within 0.2% of 180:1.
This may be an acceptable solution provided that the
gearbox is not being used in a timing application. If the
purpose of this gearbox is to step down the motor speed
for a crane hoist, for example, an approximate ratio will
be adequate.
 7.3 Compound Gear Trains
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Design of compound gear trains

4. Many gearboxes are used in production machinery to drive

camshafts or linkages from a master driveshaft and must have

the exact ratio needed or else the driven device will eventually
get out of phase with the rest of the machine. If that were the
case in this example, then the solution found in step 3 would
not be good enough. We will need to redesign it for exactly
180:1. Since our overall train ratio is an integer, it will be
simplest to look for integer gearset ratios. Thus we need three
integer factors of 180. The first solution above gives us a
reasonable starting point in the cube root of 180, which is
5.646. If we round this up (or down) to an integer, we may be
able to find a suitable combination.
5. Two compounded stages of 6:1 together give 36:1. Dividing

180 by 36 gives 5. Thus the stages shown in Table 907 provide

one possible exact solution.
 7.3 Compound Gear Trains
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 7.4 Epicyclic or Planetary Gear Train
2-DOF device.
Normally 2 inputs needed to obtain a predictable output.
Advantages: large gear ratio and choice of output direction.
Applications automatic transmissions, aircraft engine to propeller
reductions, in-hub bicycle transmission.
 7.4 Epicyclic or Planetary Gear Train
Difficult to get usable output from the orbiting gear shown in Figure 9-33.
Figure 9-34 shows a useful configuration.
 7.4 Epicyclic or Planetary Gear Train
Using table approach which represents gear = arm + gear/arm (equation 1)
for each gear to analyse the velocities in an epicyclic train.
Example

Consider the train in Figure 9-34, which has the following tooth numbers and
initial conditions:

Sun gear N2 = 40-tooth external gear

Planet gear N3 = 20-tooth external gear
Ring gear N4 = 80-tooth external gear
Input to arm 200 rpm clockwise
Input to sun 100 rpm clockwise

Find the absolute output angular velocity of the ring gear.

 7.4 The Tabular Method
Solution
1. Create solution table as in Figure 9-36.

2. Enter known data as shown in Figure 9-37.

 7.4 The Tabular Method
Solution

3. Once any one row has 2 entries, the remaining column can be calculated from
equation 1. Once any one value in the velocity difference column (column 3) is
found, the gear ratios can be applied to calculate all other values in that column.

4. The overall train value for this example can be calculated from the table and is,
from arm to ring gear +1.25:1 and from sun gear to ring gear +2.5:1.
7.4 The Formula Method
Not necessary to tabulate the solution to an epicyclic train.

Velocity difference formula can be solved directly for the train ratio.

Let F represent angular velocity of the first gear (either end)

L represent angular velocity of the last gear (at the other end)

For the first gear in the system: F/arm = F arm

For the last gear in the system: L/arm = L arm

Dividing the last by the first: L/arm / F/arm = L arm / F arm = R

product of number of teeth on driver gears L arm

R= = eqn.1
product of number of teeth on driven gears F arm
7.4 The Formula Method
Example
Consider the same epicyclic train as in the tabular method example which has the
following tooth numbers and initial conditions:

S. Gear #2 : N2 = 100-tooth
S. Gear #3 : N3 = 99-tooth
S. Gear #4 : N4 = 101-tooth
Planet Gear : N5 = 20-tooth
Input to sun #2 : 0 rpm
Input to arm : 100 rpm CCW

Sun gear 2 is fixed to the frame, providing one input (zero velocity) to the system.
The arm is driven at 100 rpm CCW as the second input. Find the angular
velocities of the two outputs that are available from this compound train, one from
gear 3 and one from gear 4, both of which are free to rotate on the main shaft.
 7.4 The Formula Method
Solution

1. Apply eqn. 1 twice, once for each output gear. Taking gear 3 as last gear and
gear 2 as the first gear, we have:

N2 = 100 N3 = 99 N5 = 20
arm = +100 F = 0 L = ?

2. Substitute in eqn. 1, we get:

N 2 N 5 L arm
=
N 5 N 3 F arm
100 20 3 100
=
20 99 0 100
3 = 1.01
 7.4 The Formula Method
Solution

3.Now taking gear 4 as last gear and gear 2 as the first gear, we have:

N2 = 100 N4 = 101 N5 = 20
arm = +100 F = 0 L = ?

4. Substitute in eqn. 1, we get:

N 2 N 5 L arm
=
N 5 N 4 F arm
100 20 w4 100
=
20 101 0 100
3 = +0.99