A Study on Attenuating Gear Teeth Oscillations at Low Engine Speeds Using Nonlinear Vibration Absorbers

Gear oscillations are one of the most common sources of Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) issues manifested in automotive powertrains. These oscillations are generated mainly due to impacts of the meshing gear teeth over a broad frequency range. To mitigate NVH phenomena, automotive manufacturers traditionally couple linear tuned vibration absorbers to the driveline. Common palliatives used are clutch dampers and dual mass flywheels, which generally suppress vibrations effectively only over narrow frequency bands. Nonlinear Energy Sinks (NESs) are a class of vibration absorbers with essentially nonlinear characteristics that are designed for dissipating vibration energy over broad frequency ranges (due to the employed nonlinearity). The NES does not have a preferential natural frequency; this is rather characterized by the nonlinear stiffness. An NES functions on the principle of transferring energy between the primary system (e.g. driveline) and the absorber in two ways: (i) the NES induces a unidirectional transfer of the vibration energy excess from the primary system to the absorber and (ii) the NES induces a redistribution of the vibration energy excess in the modes of the primary structure, enhancing the energy dissipation capabilities of the primary structure. This paper presents a study on the use of NESs for reducing oscillations on gear pairs operating at low engine operating speeds. Numerical simulations were performed using a gear pair model equipped with an absorber with essentially cubic nonlinear stiffness, attached to the gear wheel. The stiffness and inertia properties of the absorber were varied with the objective of obtaining the parameter combination that induces significant attenuation of the oscillatory motion of the gear wheel. The occurring motion of the system using different sets of parameters is studied and presented.