Nonlinear dynamics of a spur gear pair with time-varying stiffness and backlash based on incremental harmonic balance method

In this paper the incremental harmonic balance method (IHBM) is extended to analyze the nonlinear dynamics of a spur gear pair and some new results are obtained. At first the dynamical model of a spur gear pair is established, where the backlash, time-varying stiffness and static transmission error are all included. Here the time-varying stiffness and static transmission error are represented by the multi-order harmonic series through Fourier expansion. Based on the IHBM, the general forms of the periodic solutions for this system are founded, which is useful to obtain the solutions with arbitrary precision. And the difference between the frequency-response to the multi-order and single-order harmonic is analyzed. Then the effects of the multi-order harmonic on the kinds of the periodic solutions are also investigated by IHBM, and the comparison with the numerical solutions shows the validity of the proposed method. At last the influence of the damping ratio and the excitation amplitude on frequency-response curves is researched, which presents some useful information to analyze and/or control the dynamics of gear system. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.