Effect of a Planetary Gearbox on the Dynamics of a Rotor System

The dynamic analysis of rotors with bladed disks has been investigated in detail over many decades and is reasonably well understood today. In contrast, the dynamic behaviour of two rotors that are coupled via a planetary gearbox is much less well understood. The planetary gearbox adds inertia, mass, stiffness, damping and gyroscopic moments to the system and can strongly affect the modal properties and the dynamic behaviour of the global rotating system. The main objective of this paper is to create a six degrees of freedom numerical model of a rotor system with a planetary gearbox and to investigate its effect on the coupled rotor system. The analysis is based on the newly developed finite element software “GEAROT” which provides axial, torsional and lateral deflections of the two shafts at different speeds via Timoshenko beam elements and also takes gyroscopic effects into account. The disks are currently considered as rigid and the bearings are modelled with isotropic stiffness elements in the translational and rotational directions. A novel planetary gearbox model has been developed, which takes the translational and rotational stiffness and the damping of the gearbox, as well as the masses and inertias of the sun gear, ring gear, planet gears and carrier into account. A rotating system with a planetary gearbox has been investigated with GEAROT. The gearbox mass and stiffness parameters are identified as having a significant effect on the modal behaviour of the rotor system, affecting its natural frequencies and mode shapes. The higher frequency modes are found to be more sensitive to the parameter changes as well as the modes which have a higher deflection at the location of the gearbox on the rotor system. Compared with a single shaft system, the presence of a gearbox introduces new global modes to the rotor system and decouples the mode shapes of the two shafts. The introduction of a planetary gearbox may also lead to an increase or a reduction of the frequency response of the rotor system based on gear parameter values.