Coupled Lateral-Torsional Vibration of a Gear-Pair System Supported by a Squeeze Film Damper

This paper presents a model and analysis of the coupled lateral-torsional vibration of a gear-pair system supported by a squeeze film damper (SFD). Steady state dynamic characteristics of the system are considered. First, insight is gained into the dynamics of the system and the model is partially verified by investigating the linear characteristics of a specific configuration. Then, the response of the nonlinear system is examined for rotating unbalance excitation. The trigonometric collocation method (TCM) is employed to obtain steady-state responses, while direct integration is used to verify these results. The sensitivity of the system to lateral-torsional coupling is examined by comparing steady response with and without this effect. The response sensitivity to various system parameters, e.g., gear mesh stiffness and damping, SFD clearance to diameter ratio, and gear mass unbalance, is also studied. As expected, the numerical results reveal that the lateral motion dominant modes may be significantly attenuated by using an SFD, while the torsional motion dominant modes are sensitive to gear mesh damping. The strong nonlinearity of the SFD is responsible for complex dynamic response in some frequency ranges.