On the Behaviour of Planetary Gear Sets with an n Number of Planets

This work focuses on the impact that the sequential mesh phasing, together with the number of planets, have in the performance of a planetary gearset. More precisely, in the context of this work, the indicative parameter for the performance of the transmission is its load sharing. Given the geometrical implications that the mesh phasing has in the contact among either sun and planets or planets and ring, this translates in a drastic change in the transmission’s load sharing and, therefore, in its behaviour and probability of failure. As a result of the geometrical design of the transmission, the load sharing will present inherent imbalances beyond the presence of manufacturing errors. Furthermore, floatability has been included in the sun support in order to increase the realism in the modelling.