The Effect of Micro-Geometry and Load on Helical Gear Noise Excitations

The prediction of gear noise may normally be treated as a classical source - path - receiver problem. Usually, the excitation occurs in the gear mesh and the path includes the transmission of forces and motions through the shafts and bearings to the gear housing, which in turn radiates the noise. This paper focuses on the source aspect of the problem and identifies the major sources of gear whine noise and develops a metric that incorporates these sources into a single equation. An example then shows how the micro-topography of a gear set affects several of the excitation components. A computer program that predicts the load distribution and motion errors of a gear pair is used for the analyses.