Implementation and Simulation of the Two-Stage Cycloidal Gearbox Multibody Dynamics Model with Nonlinear Contact Forces

Cycloidal gearboxes have attracted significant attention of the industry as well scientific community for their applications in robotics as well as in high precision machinery. Due the force distribution of the particular components of the transition system, they can be easily manufactured using wildly available additive manufacturing for prototyping purposes as well as for the enthusiasts. To understand behaviour of this gearboxes number of simulation software's have arisen, differencing in the options which provides base of area of application. State of the art software, Romax from company Hexagon, allows to analyse the transmission systems in terms of its durability, noise, vibration as well as bearing analysis. This approach has its limitations as the analysis is solved only on static cases without evolution in time and due to pre-defined cases, only limited type of structures can be used in the simulations. This work introduces method of implementation and simulation of the inverted two-stage cycloidal gearbox in the Hexagon’s software Adams, facilitating nonlinear contact forces as the base of methodology. With this approach, the designed by authors gearbox could be set up as the model and perform the dynamic analysis of the drive. A developed simulation model was tested and then its parameters were optimised based on the measurements of penetration depth of contact forces, which were further used as a method of model verification.