Influence of errors in planetary transmissions load sharing under different mesh phasing

Abstract This work studies the changes in behaviour, in terms of load sharing, of planetary transmissions due to the incidence of different factors. Amongst those, mesh phasing and various errors, such as tooth thickness and pinhole position errors, are taken into consideration. As far as mesh phasing is concerned, the geometry of the transmission is studied and how this mesh phasing together with errors affects the transmission performance, especially for sequentially phased configurations given the imbalance in the load sharing ratio. All these are analysed for common configurations with odd number of planets given the interest behind the lack of diametrically opposed planets. Fruit of this work it is proved the non-negligible impact of radial errors in planetary transmissions, especially for sequentially phased transmissions. Furthermore, it was observed that a higher number of planets sharpens the effect of errors on the load sharing ratio.