Effects of tip relief on vibration responses of a geared rotor system

Considering tip relief, a finite element model of a spur gear pair in mesh is established by ANSYS software. Time-varying mesh stiffness under different amounts of tip relief is calculated based on the finite element model. Then, a finite element model of a geared rotor system is developed by MATLAB software considering the effects of time-varying mesh stiffness and constant load torque. Emphasis is given to the effects of tip relief on the lateral–torsional coupling vibration responses of the system. The results show that as the amount of tip relief increases, the saltation of time-varying mesh stiffness reduces at the position of approach action and transition mesh region from the single tooth to double tooth. A number of primary resonances and some super-harmonic of gears 1 and 2 are excited by time-varying mesh stiffness in amplitude frequency responses. As the amount of tip relief increases, some super-harmonic responses change due to the variation in the higher frequency components of time-varying mesh stiffness. After tip relief, the vibration and meshing force decrease obviously at lower mesh frequency range except at some resonance frequencies; however, tip relief is not effective in reducing the vibration at higher mesh frequency range. The amplitude fluctuation of the vibration acceleration reduces evidently after considering tip relief, which is not remarkable with the increase of meshing frequency.