The Influence of Time-Varying Meshing Stiffness on the Vibration Characteristics of Gears in Electric Drive Axle Reducers

The dynamic characteristics of the electric drive axle of the new energy commercial vehicle is an important performance to evaluate its quality, and the dynamic performance of the two-stage helical gear transmission system in the electric drive axle reducer directly reflects the dynamic performance of the electric drive axle. This study focuses on the secondary gear transmission system of the electric drive axle reducer of the new energy commercial vehicle, and mainly studies the influence of the tooth surface contact stiffness with the change of meshing on the vibration performance of the transmission system. Through establishing the coupled nonlinear dynamic model of torque-begear shaft of high-speed helical gear, the dynamic equations of the system under the influence of time-variable contact mesh stiffness are derived. Taking gear error excitation and support stiffness into consideration, a 3D model software is used to build the simulation virtual model of bevel gear of electric drive axle reducer, and the dynamic simulation analysis of its transmission system is carried out. By setting different tooth contact stiffness coefficients, the variation rules of translational vibration acceleration, angular acceleration and spectrum response of transmission gears are studied systematically. Simulation results indicate that selecting the contact stiffness coefficient within 80% to 90% of the average mesh stiffness value leads to improved meshing performance in the gear transmission system of an electric drive axle reducer. This configuration results in reduced vibration amplitude, narrower sidebands, and decreased dynamic transmission error, thereby effectively enhancing the NVH performance of the transmission system. The findings also provide an important reference for optimizing the meshing behavior of electric drive axle reducers.