EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EXCITATION BEHAVIOR OF ECCENTRIC CYCLOID GEARINGS

An important characteristic of gear drives is the noise behavior, which can be influenced by the design of the gears. The dynamics and NVH behavior of gearboxes depend to a large extent on the flank geometry of the meshing teeth. The most common profile shape of the meshing teeth is the involute, especially for cylindrical gears. Involute gearings and their characteristics have been studied thoroughly in research and industrial practice and are, therefore, well established. Specific characteristics of the involute, especially of gears with low tooth numbers, can be disadvantageous for their performance, such as undercut and small radii of curvature close to the base circle. Special gearings can overcome these limits through their adapted profile geometry and thus offer potential for the design of gearboxes. One of these special gearings is the eccentric cycloid (EC) gearing, which consists of a gear with a circular arc profile and a mating gear with a profile of a trochoid equidistant. Compared to involute gears, the EC gearing has a different flank geometry and path of contact and, therefore, a different mesh excitation behavior. The known findings on the NVH behavior of involute gearings cannot be transferred directly to the EC gearing. In this paper, the mesh excitation behavior of EC gearing will be considered through the evaluation of experimental investigations. For this, the special geometry of the EC gearing is presented. Various dynamic and static tests of an exemplary EC gearing are carried out on the FZG dynamic test rig. The test results obtained are analyzed in order to gain insights into the mesh excitation behavior of the EC gearing.