Experimental Study of the Factors Affecting Transfer Case NVH Performance in 4-Lo Operation Mode

In this paper, the results of the experimental study are presented to describe the impact of several gear design and manufacturing related factors on NVH performance of a transfer case operating in 4-Lo mode. The investigated gear design factors include lead crowning and profile crowning of the planet gears. The influence of manufacturing and assembly is investigated by varying carrier pinhole tangential position error and carrier pinhole tangential tilt error. The experimental DOE study is performed on chassis dynamometer by using actual vehicle. The strategically placed accelerometers and microphones are used for data acquisition. The results show that, among the gear design related factors, lead modification has larger influence on the NVH performance than profile modification. The study also shows how manufacturing errors influence NVH performance of the transfer case by causing lead misalignment of gears and unequal planet load sharing.