THEORETICAL STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF PLANET GEAR RIM THICKNESS AND BEARING CLEARANCE ON CALCULATED BEARING LIFE

摘要

Planetary gearboxes are becoming more popular due to their high power density and potentially high efficiency. When the planet bearings are internally mounted, the body of the planet gear has to be hollow. The demand for large outer diameters due to high load requirements might result in a small planet rim thickness. Depending on the rim thickness, its rigidity may become very low. Due to the low stiffness and the special load conditions caused by the double meshing, the deformation of the planet and its bearings are unique. In this paper, the influence of rim thickness on bearing load and lifetime are examined. The analysis is performed with an FEM model of a planet rim with a built-in cylindrical roller bearing. With the resulting planet deformation from the FEM calculation, the load distribution on the rolling elements in the bearing and the bearing lifetime according to ISO/TS 16281:2008 have been evaluated.