Title: Analysis and design of a dynamic gear testing apparatus using high stiffness thermo-hydraulic actuators

Authors: Georgios Vasiliou; Vasilios Spitas

Addresses: School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece ' School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece

Abstract: Dynamic gear testing has always produced controversial results since the testing apparatuses and measuring methods have failed to distinguish the eigen-behaviour of the gear-pair from vibrations coming from the inevitable excitation of shafts, housing-parts and other ancillary equipment. Numerical techniques for separating and identifying the gear-mesh signal from the acquired data have been developed, although this procedure requires specialised software tools and can only be implemented in special cases involving rigid gear arrangements. Nevertheless, this is not always feasible, as it is when the gear shafts need to be rotated in space to simulate positioning and assembly errors resulting in misalignment. In this work, a novel ultra-rigid thermo-hydraulic actuator design is proposed to use in a laboratory gear test rig able to quantify, control and reliably measure the dynamic characteristics of misaligned cylindrical gear-pairs in mesh. A comparative study over existing actuation solutions and a thorough eigen-frequency numerical analysis highlight the unique potential of the proposed design.

Keywords: gear testing; dynamic testing; high stiffness actuators; thermo-hydraulic actuators; misalignment; vibration; ultra-rigid actuator design; laboratory test rigs; cylindrical gear pairs.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPT.2016.079097

International Journal of Powertrains, 2016 Vol.5 No.3, pp.304 - 324

Received: 17 Aug 2015
Accepted: 03 Apr 2016
Published online: 12 Sep 2016 *

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