Rigid-elastic modeling of meshing gear wheels in multibody systems

In many applications in mechanical engineering, gear wheels are used to transmit power between rotating shafts and, therefore, the ability to incorporate them into multibody systems and to simulate contact between them has become an essential topic in multibody dynamics. However, in some applications gear wheels may not be considered as being perfectly rigid. Due to the effect of contact forces there occur relevant deformations in meshing teeth and it is required for a high quality of the analysis to introduce some elasticities in the model of meshing gear wheels. Therefore, in this work elastic elements between the teeth and the body of each gear wheel are considered. This approach is especially well suited for multibody systems since it is a compromise between a totally rigid model and a fully elastic model allowing the simulation of large motions with many revolutions while still important elasticities are considered. The teeth and the body of each gear wheel are still modelled as being rigid but they are connected to each other by elastic elements. In doing so, an efficient and physically motivated algorithm is described and implemented in order to find the effects of multi-tooth contact as well as backlash and left and right hand side contact of the meshing teeth. Some examples compare the simulation results of rigid, partially elastic and fully elastic models.