Susceptibility of planetary gear trains to clearances and misalignments

Abstract

Clearances and misalignments alter the performance of kinematic chains and gear trains. Errors are usually classified as position error and transmission error, position error is the error in angular position with respect to the ideal position. Backlashes in gear trains and joint clearances in linkages produce position error while the transmission error is caused by the misalignment. The gear trains may have self-locking tendencies (similar to singular positions in linkages). There are a huge number of distinct linkages and planetary gear trains with specified number of links and degree-of-freedom. Hence, it is necessary to compare them in order to select the best possible chains or gear trains. An attempt is made to compare distinct gear trains from the view points of position and transmission errors.