Fault feature analysis of planetary gear system with tooth root crack and flexible ring gear rim

Planetary gear transmission has a wide application in different areas due to its advantages such as compactness, large torque-to-weight ratio, reduced noise and vibrations. However, its dynamic responses are much more complex due to the complicated structures and relative motions, which make it difficult in the fault feature extractions at the view point of fault detection. Better understanding on the dynamic features of a planetary gear transmission and the corresponding internal excitation sources will benefit the fault feature extractions. In this paper, an analytical model for mesh stiffness calculation is developed based on the potential energy principle and uniformly curved Timoshenko beam theory, which enables exploring the effects of the tooth root crack fault and the flexible ring gear rim on the dynamic responses. Based on the developed model, the frequency spectrum structures of the planetary gear transmission can be revealed and analyzed theoretically in the presence of tooth crack and flexible ring gear. A case study is performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed model, where the tooth root cracks are seeded in a tooth of the sun, planet, and ring gears. The simulated results indicate that the complicated modulation phenomenon can be observed where the causes of different frequency components can be revealed. This study is expected to be able to give some theoretical guidance on the identification of vibration sources for planetary gear transmissions.