Experimental study of the effect of assembly error on the lightly loaded transmission error of spur gear with crown modification

Experimental measurement of transmission error and vibration of a gear pair with crown modification are developed. With the help of high-precision optical encoder, effects of gear misalignment on unloaded and lightly loaded dynamic transmission error, which are relative to gear rattle, are investigated. The gear mesh misalignment is introduced by eccentric sleeve assembled on the output shaft. Effects of modification and misalignment on the dynamic transmission error, are studied at different load and driving velocity conditions. The experimental results show that, with the increase of the crown amplitude, the peak-to-peak values of dynamic transmission error are decreasing dramatically. Impact deformation or elastic deformation is a very important part of the dynamic transmission error although they are unloaded or lightly loaded. The components in harmonics of meshing frequency will change distinctly comparing cases at low input shaft velocity without and with misalignment, but different phenomena are detected while increasing the input shaft velocity. Finally, the relation between transmission error and gear box vibration is illustrated, and spectrum kurtosis is introduced to reveal gear rattle.