Impact of load-sharing on dynamic characteristics of herringbone gears

In herringbone gears transmission, the pinion generally adopts the axial floating installation through the axial movement to realize the balance of axial force at both ends, which is called the load-sharing phenomenon. Load-sharing is an important characteristic of herringbone gears transmission, the essence of load-sharing analysis is the calculation of axial displacement at low rotation speed. The axial displacement at low rotation speed periodically changes with the tooth meshing (tooth frequency) and shaft rotation (shaft frequency), which is one of the excitation of the system vibration at high speed. However, it is not considered in the current dynamic characteristics study of herringbone gears. Therefore, the axial displacement under low rotation speed is calculated and is treaded as a kind of error excitation to put in the dynamic model of herringbone gears in this paper. Further, the impact of load-sharing on dynamic characteristics of herringbone gears is studied and the results show that the displacement, velocity, and acceleration in direction of bending, torsion, and axial all have changed, the maximum variation is up to 81,651% while considering the axial displacement. Therefore, the impact of load-sharing should not be ignored in the dynamic characteristics analysis, especially for the accurate analysis of dynamic characteristics for herringbone gears. The study enriches the theory of dynamic characteristic analysis of herringbone gears.