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Article in ARCHIVE Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part C Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science 1989-1996 (vols 203-210) · December 2015
DOI: 10.1177/0954406215622656
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Nogill Park
Pusan National University
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Abstract
This study investigates a method of calculating tooth modification amount of a wind-turbine gearbox. The requirements
of high reliability and a service life of 20 years or longer for wind power gearboxes necessitate appropriate gear meshes,
which require elaborate tooth modification. The interference between teeth caused by deformation of the gear body and
the shaft alignment error, which is caused by deformation of system components such as the housing, the bearings, and
the shaft, was calculated, and the result was used to determine the tooth modification parameters. Thus, a method of
calculating tooth modification amount was developed that can be performed without trial and error; its reliability was
confirmed by an evaluation through simulation. Contact was evenly distributed over the tooth surfaces after the tooth
profile was corrected, thus improving the edge contact pattern relative to the situation before correction.
Keywords
Wind-turbine gearbox, angle deformation, torsional deformation, tooth deflection, tooth modification
Introduction
Kubo et al.1 measured gear transmission errors by
This study investigates a method of calculating tooth modularizing the tooth profile of a vehicle transmis-
modification amount of a wind-turbine gearbox. In a sion and examined its correlation with gear noise.
wind power generation system, low-speed and high- Tavakoli and Houser2 conducted research on the opti-
torque power is input from the blade to the gearbox, mization of tooth modification in the profile direction
which transfers high-speed and low-torque power to to minimize the static transmission errors of internal
the power generator. An important feature of this and external spur gears. Lin et al.3,4 investigated the
system is that as the blade rotates at a high horse- dynamic response characteristics produced when tip
power and low speed, a very high torque and bending relief and parabolic tooth modification were applied
moment are applied as the input of the gearbox. The to the spur gear profile direction to determine the
speed of the rotor blade of a wind power generator amount of tooth modification when a minimum
ranges between 15 and 40 r/min, the input speed of the dynamic load was applied. Choi and David5 examined
power generator ranges between 1000 and 1800 r/min, the relationship between the mesh stiffness and tooth
and the range of speed increase ratio is 50–200. High deformation of a spur gear and helical gear and the
reliability along with a service life of 20 years is applied load. Bonori et al.6 conducted research on
required for the wind-turbine gearbox. Since the tooth profile modification to reduce vibration of a
wind-turbine gearbox is fixed to the nacelle using spur gear pair using genetic algorithms. Li7,8 studied
torque arms, the shaft and case are severely distorted, the transmission error, load distribution, and mesh
causing more severe torsional vibration than is seen in stiffness of spur gears that underwent tooth profile
industrial reducers and automobile transmissions. modification due to assembling errors. Most of these
Accordingly, not only the strength and durability studies were carried out on the gear transmission
but also the noise and vibration of the gearbox of a error, optimization of load distribution, and
wind power generator need to be evaluated. To reduce
the vibration and noise of a gearbox, the contact pat-
1
tern of the gear must be improved by tooth modifica- School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Korea
2
tion. Therefore, technology is required that can Department of Mechanical Engineering, JungWon University, Korea
accurately calculate the deformation generated by
Corresponding author:
the load and reflect it in the tooth modification in NoGill Park, Pusan National University, Jangjeon-Dong, Geumjeong-
the lead direction. The following studies of Gu, Busan, Korea.
tooth modification were previously carried out. Email: parkng@pusan.ac.kr
technology for correcting the tooth profile in the dir- Between the tooth tip and the root, an edge contact is
ection of the profile to avoid edge contact. This paper made due to pitch errors caused by process or assem-
presents a reliable method for calculating tooth modi- bly errors or tooth deformation. In the tooth width
fication in the lead direction, taking into account the direction, an edge contact is made due to the torsional
deformation caused by the distortion of shaft, case, deformation of the shaft, deformation of the bearings
and other components. The instant screw axis (ISA) and housing, etc. due to the applied load. The amount
was obtained by determining the deformation of the of tooth modification for ensuring that the contact
front and rear ends of the gear when the gearbox occurs at the center of the tooth was calculated.
deformed under load. The tooth interference in the
lead direction was accurately calculated by determin-
ing the deformation angle of the central shaft of the
Deformation analysis of the wind-turbine gearbox
gear distorted relative to the ISA and the distance to The gearbox was modeled using MASTA (the gear
the ISA. The interference in the lead direction result- analysis program) and a finite-element method.
ing from the distortion of the gear body was also More specifically, the gear, shaft, and bearing were
calculated and added to the tooth interference. modeled using MASTA, while the housing was mod-
Thus, the ideal tooth modification was determined eled based on the finite-element method. The
without trial and error. The validity of the tooth substructure synthesis method was applied to com-
modification obtained through this method was ver- bine the MASTA model and the finite-element
ified by an analysis of tooth contact. model. The accelerating unit examined in this study
was a combination of planetary gears and helical
Calculation of tooth modification gears. Figure 1 shows the schematization of a gearbox
where S, P, and R signify sun gears, planetary gears,
amounts for a wind-turbine gearbox
and ring gears, respectively. The motive power
The amount of tooth deformation of a gearbox for applied to the input shaft is distributed to the carrier
wind power generation can be calculated by perform- of stage 1 and the ring gear of stage 2, and the carrier
ing a structural analysis of the system. The structural of stage 2 is connected to the housing as one unit. The
analysis was conducted by predicting the angle sun gear of stage 1 is linked to the helical gear of stage
deformation of a gear support shaft and gear-body 3. The gear train is fixed to the housing and nacelle,
torsional deformation, thereby calculating the tooth and the nacelle is assumed to be the ground surface.
modification amount in the lead direction. For the Table 2 shows the specification of a gear.
profile direction, the amount of tooth modification The housing is supported by the nacelle through
was determined by considering the tooth deformation the torque-arm mount. As the mount has a significant
needed to prevent edge contact in the profile direction. impact on system deformation, it should be con-
Table 1 shows incorrect tooth contact patterns as well sidered at the time of modeling. Between the torque
as the tooth contact patterns after tooth modification. arm and the ground surface, a spring was used for the
stiffness of the mount. Table 3 shows the mount stiff-
ness values.
Table 1. Tooth contact patterns.
The structural analysis of a housing model based
on the finite-element method has disadvantages in
Causes Tooth contact patterns terms of analysis time and memory. Therefore, the
analysis was combined with a gear train model
Deformations
of the gear tooth
based on MASTA using the substructure synthesis
method. In this study, component mode synthesis
was applied, which is a method developed by
Hurty.9 The rigid-body-motion mode and boundary-
deformation mode proposed by Hurty were general-
Lead errors due to torsional ized to a constraint mode by Craig and Bampton; this
deformation of both method is called the Craig–Bampton method.10 The
the shaft and transmission case load conditions for the structural analysis were deter-
mined by considering the moment generated at the
blades and the deflection due to blade weight. When
a blade makes a rotary motion, the moment is
Modification of the produced in the rotary, horizontal, and vertical direc-
objective tooth tions. Heier11 explained the moment conditions of a
blade caused by wind loads, and Kim et al.12 per-
formed a simulation analysis on the torque and
bending moments at an input shaft in response to
variations in the incident angle of the wind. This
study applied a condition where a gust of wind,
S P R S P R I O
Module 13 17.5 11
Pressure angle 20
Center distance 420 mm 525 mm 550 mm
Helix angle – – 20
Face width 220 mm 280 mm 220 mm
Number of tooth 26 37 103 27 32 93 74 19
Profile shift 0.2 0.5 0.1 0.3 0.1 0.2 0.03 0.5
Addendum 1
Dedendum 1.25
! !
projection of n01 and n02 on the xy-plane is assumed to
!00
! 00
be n1 and n2 , respectively, the amount of angle
deformation in the xy-plane can be calculated by
applying equation (3)
!00
!00
cosðÞ ¼ n1 n2 ð3Þ
m,k ¼ Hk Ak 00 k ð11Þ
Total amount of tooth interference in the lead gear with the ring gear (p r). The amount of inter-
direction. The total amount of tooth interference in ference of a planetary gear in the lead direction is a
the lead direction can be determined by adding the larger value between the s p contact and the p r
tooth interference due to angle deformation and the contact. Figure 9 shows a diagram of the tooth modi-
tooth interference due to torsional deformation. fication in the lead direction. To specify the tooth
Equation (14) shows the amount of tooth interference modification, based on the calculated amounts of
in the lead direction. The same method for calculating tooth modification interference, bilateral symmetric
the interference amount on the pitch circle is applied crowning is performed. This prevents edge contacts
to both the internal and the external gears caused by the lean to one side, considering the tooth
interferences when the system is deformed under load.
L,k m,k þ t,k ð14Þ
Tooth modification in the profile direction
Table 7 shows the prediction of tooth interference
amounts based on Tables 4 and 5. In the case of a For the profile direction, tooth modification is done to
planetary gear, the amount of tooth interference (m,k ) ensure smooth contact and rotation, by preventing
depends on the contact of the sun gear with the edge contacts that occur when a tooth approaches
planetary gear (s p) and the contact of the planetary or moves away due to tooth deformation. Figure 10
shows the contact path of internal and external
gears.14 The gear contact takes place between
T1 and T2 , causing the contact length to change. A
spur gear makes a two-point contact between the
highest point of single tooth contact (HPSTC) and
the lowest point of single tooth contact (LPSTC),
and it makes a one-point contact in other parts.
Likewise, a helical gear makes a three-point contact
between the highest point of double tooth contact
(HPDTC) and the lowest point of double tooth con-
tact (LPDTC), and it makes a two-point contact in
other parts. The number of contacts changes and an
edge contact takes place as new teeth make contact
and come in. Therefore, tooth modification is needed
to prevent edge contact by predicting the tooth deflec-
tion amount at this point.15
The amount of tooth deformation can be obtained
by calculating the transfer load and mesh stiffness.
Mesh stiffness was calculated based on methods
reported in the following studies. Lewis16 used the
tooth profile factor for the first time to calculate the
stress of gears. Based on the results of this study,
Weber,17 O’Donnell,18 and Cornell19 conducted
research on the compliance and stress of gear teeth
by considering a cantilever-shaped beam, the tooth’s
root shape, support flexibility, local deformation, etc.
Rincon et al.20 studied the mesh stiffness characteris-
tics of gears using finite-element analysis. In this
Figure 10. Contact path of external and internal gear. study, the mesh stiffness was estimated using the
Contact ratio Single stiffness (c0) Mesh stiffness (c ) Mean value of time-varying
(transverse/axial) (N/m/mm) (N/m/mm) mesh stiffness (k) (N/m)
following method. First, the average mesh stiffness dimensionless contact length curve, which is calcu-
(c ) was obtained; then, the time-varying mesh stiff- lated from the contact length curve (LðxÞ) and the
ness (kðxÞÞ was calculated using the relationship average contact length (Laverage ). The change of stiff-
between this average value and lðxÞ.21,22 lðxÞ is a ness exhibited by the contact point of a gear is
expressed in terms of dimensionless contact length
Table 9. Profile tooth modification value. change (refer to equations (15) and (17))
p (m) c ¼ ð0:75 þ 0:25Þc0 ð15Þ
Stage1 Sun 78.09 –
Planet 68.60 lðxÞ ¼ LðxÞ=Laverage ð16Þ
Ring –
kðxÞ ¼ c B lðxÞ ð17Þ
Stage2 Sun 123.91 –
Planet 108.96
In equation (15), c0 is the single stiffness, B is the tooth
Ring –
width, and is a transverse contact ratio. c0 is calcu-
Stage3 Driving 59.42 lated based on ISO to obtain the values of the
Driven spur gear, helical gear, internal gear, and external
gear. Table 8 shows the mesh stiffness calculation
data. The graph in Figure 11 shows the calculated
mesh stiffness for stages 1 to 3. The mesh stiffness
changes depending on the location and time of
contacts.
In this study, the transfer loads applied to the tooth
surface of stages 1 to 3 are 226.16 kN, 418.14 kN, and
214.61 kN, respectively. Table 9 shows the tooth
deflection amounts at the HPSTC/HPDTC of each
gear. The tooth modification starts at the HPSTC/
HPDTC. In the case of a planetary gear, the larger
tooth deformation value is chosen from the contacts
of the sun gear and ring gear. As shown in Figure 12,
tip relief was applied for the tooth modification in the
Figure 12. Profile tooth modification diagram. profile direction.
Stage/location Before tooth modification After tooth modification Reduction ratio (%)
Stage/location Before tooth modification After tooth modification Reduction ratio (%)
after tooth modification, as shown in Table 10, the con- considering the tooth interference at the pitch point
tact pressure decreased by a minimum of 0.755% and a caused by torsional deformation of the gear body.
maximum of 16.67%. Table 11 shows the peak-to-peak 3. To prevent edge contact when the number of con-
value of the gear transmission error. As this is a source tacts changes (HPTSC, HPTDC), the amount of
of vibrations, a smaller value is better. After tooth modi- tooth deformation was obtained and used as a
fication, its value decreased by 5.43–76.8%. basis for calculating the amounts of profile tooth
modification.
4. The gear contact conditions were compared before
Conclusion and after tooth modification in the lead and profile
This study examined tooth modification to optimize directions through a tooth contact analysis. Before
the contacts between gears used for a wind power tooth modification, a concentration of contacts on
generation system. the sides was observed. This phenomenon was
improved significantly after the modification. Also,
1. A system-structural analysis was conducted to after tooth modification, the contact stress was
determine the amounts of tooth modification. reduced by as much as 16.67%, and the peak-to-
Structural analysis was done by modeling, con- peak value of gear transmission errors dropped by
sidering the elastic effects of the housing of a a maximum of 76.8%, proving the validity of the
wind power generation system based on the sub- amounts of tooth modification. Thus, the validity
structure synthesis method. Also, a static analysis of the tooth modification proposed by this study
was performed by taking into account the hori- was reviewed and confirmed through simulation.
zontal, vertical, and rotary moments at blades as For stage 1, the problem of edge contact to the
well as deflection due to weight. Deformation sides was solved, and for stages 2 and 3, this problem
amounts were calculated through a structural ana- was found to be alleviated by considering only angle
lysis; based on the results, the tooth modification deformation and torsional deformation.
amounts were calculated.
2. A calculating amount of tooth modification in the
Declaration of conflicting interests
lead direction was proposed. When deformation
occurred under load, the deformation angle was The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of
determined to predict the amount of tooth inter-
this article.
ference in the lead direction at the point of pitch
radius. This was distributed to the pinion and gear
Funding
according to the gear ratio to determine the tooth
modification amounts. Further, the amount of The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial
support for the research, authorship, and/or publication
tooth modification was calculated by additionally
of this article: This work was supported by the Human manufacturers association fall technical meeting, 17–19
Resources Development program (No. 20134030200290) October 2010, pp.112–126.
of the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation 16. Lewis W. Investigation of the strength of gear teeth.
and Planning (KETEP) grant funded by the Korea Eng Club Philadelphia 1893(10): 16–23.
Government Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. 17. Weber C. The deformations of loaded gears and the
effect on their load-carrying capacity. Sponsored
Research, British Department of Scientific and
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