A fast and efficient mesh stiffness model for spur gears considering thin-walled or oblique web

Time-varying meshing stiffness has an important contribution to the vibration control in gear systems. However, the design of gears in the electric vehicles and aerospace field is more focused on lightweight. The accurate and efficient evaluation of the time-varying meshing stiffness of lightweight spur gears has become a challenging problem, such as considering the thin-walled or oblique web. Therefore, a new approach is proposed to calculate the mesh stiffness of the lightweight spur gear by combining an analytical model and the dynamic model of the gear pair. The gear model is constructed by adopting the shell element to save computer resources and model preparation time. The validity of the presented model is investigated by comparing it with the traditional analytical and finite element models. The analytical results indicate that the proposed model has the same level of computational efficiency as the analytical model while maintaining the precision of the finite element model. The advantages of the proposed method are the ability to consider the effects of thin-walled web and oblique spoke plate structures on the mesh stiffness.