Sun and planet gear

The sun and planet gear (also called the planet and sun gear) was a method of converting reciprocating motion to rotary motion and was used in the first rotative beam engines. It was invented by the Scottish engineer William Murdoch, an employee of Boulton and Watt, but was patented by James Watt in October 1781. It was invented to bypass the patent on the crank, already held by James Pickard.[1] It played an important part in the development of devices for rotation in the Industrial Revolution.[citation needed] The Sun-Planet Worm Gear block represents a two-degree-of-freedom planetary gear built from carrier, sun and planet gears. By type, the sun and planet gears are crossed helical spur gears arranged as a worm-gear transmission, in which the planet gear is a worm. Such transmissions are used in the Torsen type 1 differential. When transmitting power, the sun gear can be independently rotated by the worm (planet) gear, or by the carrier, or both.

You specify a fixed gear ratio, which is determined as the ratio of the worm angular velocity to the sun gear angular velocity. You control the direction by setting the worm thread type, lefthanded or right-handed. Rotation of the right-handed worm in positive direction causes the sun gear to rotate in positive direction too. The positive directions of the sun gear and the carrier are the same.

Most automatic transmissions use epicyclic or planetary gears. They are constantly in mesh with each other. A basic planetary gearset has a sun gear, which meshes with planet gears, also called planet pinions. The planet pinions, in sets of three or more, rotate on bearings, on hardened steel pins, on a planet carrier, which spaces the pinions equally around the sun gear. It also locates them so they can mesh with an internally toothed ring gear. This means the planet pinions are always in mesh with the sun gear and the ring gear. In operation, their motion is described as either Walking" or "Idling". Walking means that if either the sun gear, or the ring gear, is held stationary, the alternative driving member rotates the planet gears on their pins. This turns the planet carrier in the same direction as the driving member. Planet gears always turn in the same direction on their pins as planet carrier rotation, while they walk around a stationary sun gear. They always turn in the opposite direction on their pins while walking inside a stationary ring gear. "Idling" refers to the rotation of the planet gears on their pins whenever the planet carrier is stationary. Torque is transmitted from the sun gear to the ring gear, or from the ring gear to the sun gear, via the planet gears and the stationary carrier. In both cases the driven member is turned in the opposite direction to the driving member. To provide the ratios available from the gearset, one or more of the components must be held - or released. This is normally done by hydraulic servos, operated by transmission fluid under pressure, acting on lined bands or clutches, or, by one-way clutches. They allow turning in one direction, but act as a lock-up, or reaction member in the opposite direction. In practice, a combination of these is normally used.

Operation
The sun and planet gear converted the vertical motion of a beam, driven by a steam engine, into circular motion using a 'planet', a cogwheel fixed at the end of the connecting rod (connected to the beam) of the engine. With the motion of the beam, this revolved around, and turned, the 'sun', a second rotating cog fixed to the drive shaft, thus generating rotary motion. An interesting feature of this arrangement, when compared to that of a simple crank, is that when both sun and planet have the same number of teeth, the drive shaft completes two revolutions for each double stroke of the beam instead of one. The planet gear is fixed to the connecting rod and thus does not rotate around its own axis. Note that the axle of the planet gear is tied to the axle of the sun gear by a link that freely rotates around the axis of the sun gear and keeps the planet gear engaged with the sun gear but does not contribute to the drive torque. This link appears, at first sight, to be similar to a crank but the drive is not transmitted through it. Thus, it did not contravene the crank patent.
What is Sun and Planetary Gear or Epicyclic Gear?

The sun and planetary gear arrangement, sometimes also called as Epicyclic gear train, is a gear train, where typically few smaller gears rotate and revolve by meshing around a bigger sun gear. So, thats how the name comes.
Details of the Sun and Planetary Gear Arrangement

Various arrangements of the sun and planetary gear are possible and used across the industry. And the complexity increases with the addition of the numbers of planetary gears. For the purpose of the discussion, we will use the following simple Epicyclic gear arrangement:


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As you can see from the above picture, the planet gears are connected by a rigid arm in such a way that the rotation axis of the combined planet gears and that of the sun gear lies at the same line. As the sun gear rotates, the meshed planet gears also rotates in the opposite direction and as the planet gears rotates it causes rotation to the arm connecting the planet gears. The beauty of this kind of gear arrangement is that you will have multiple options for giving input torque and getting output to and from the gear box. How?

Look at the cross section drawing of the gear above. The axis-1 and axis-3 are the axis of the planetary gears. Axis of the arm is marked as axis-2 and the axis of the sun gear is marked as axis-4. You can use the axis-4 as input and axis-2 as output for transmitting the powers. One of the benefits you will get here is both the input as well as the output axis fall in the same line. So whenever you need to transmit power and require reduction as well then you can think of using this configuration. Similarly, depending upon your power transmission requirement you can think of using any other axis combinations as your input and output axis.

Applications of Sun Planet Gear Arrangement

The sun and planetary gear is used in most of the automatic transmission system. In automatic transmission compound sun and planetary gear is used. These kinds of gear also find application for converting reciprocal motion to the rotary motion in steam engine. Another application of the sun and planetary gear is electric screw driver. You need to achieve a moderate reduction ratio in a limited space. This kind of gear trains can provide solution for wide range of transmission problem if you can customize and understand the system suitably.

Conclusion

The sun and planet gear arrangement is a non linear or Epicyclic gear train. As the name suggests, the construction of this type of gear train is similar to that of our solar system. Most of the automatic transmissions use this kind of gear train. Though we use the basic gearing law for calculating the gear ratio for the sun and planet gear arrangement as well but slightly different way.
12.3. Advantages and Disadvantages of Gear DriveThe error in cutting teeth may cause
The following are the advantages and disadvantages of the gear drive as compared to belt, rope and chain drives :vibrations and noise during operation Advantages 1. It transmits exact velocity ratio. 2. It may be used to transmit large power. 3. It has high efficiency. 4. It has reliable service. 5. It has compact layout. Disadvantages 1. The manufacture of gears require special tools and equipment.

2. The error in cutting teeth may cause vibrations and noise during operation.

Sun-Planet Worm Gear Model

Model Variables RWG Gear, or transmission, ratio determined as the ratio of the worm angular velocity to the gear angular velocity. The ratio is positive for the right-hand worm and negative for the left-hand worm. S P C Angular velocity of the sun gear Planet (that is, worm) angular velocity Carrier angular velocity

SC Angular velocity of the sun with respect to the carrier L d S P C Normal pressure angle Worm lead angle Worm lead Worm pitch diameter Torque applied to the sun shaft Torque applied to the planet shaft Torque applied to the carrier shaft

loss Torque loss due to meshing friction. The loss depends on the device efficiency and the power flow direction. To avoid abrupt change of the friction torque at S = 0, the friction torque is introduced via the hyperbolic function. instfr Instantaneous value of the friction torque added to the model to simulate friction losses fr k Steady-state value of the friction torque Friction coefficient

WG Efficiency for worm-gear power transfer GW Efficiency for gear-worm power transfer th SC Absolute angular velocity threshold Sun-carrier viscous friction coefficient

WC Worm-carrier viscous friction coefficient

Advantages and disadvantages

Advantages of planetary gears over parallel axis gears include high power density, large reduction in a small volume, multiple kinematic combinations, pure torsional reactions, and coaxial shafting. Disadvantages include high bearing loads,constant lubrication requirements, inaccessibility, and design complexity.[6][7] The planetary gearbox arrangement is an engineering design that offers many advantages over traditional gearbox arrangements. One advantage is its unique combination of both compactness and outstanding power transmission efficiencies. A typical efficiency loss in a planetary gearbox arrangement is only 3% per stage. This type of efficiency ensures that a high proportion of the energy being input is transmitted through the gearbox, rather than being wasted on mechanical losses inside the gearbox. Another advantage of the planetary gearbox arrangement is load distribution. Because the load being transmitted is shared between multiple planets, torque capability is greatly increased. The more planets in the system, the greater load ability and the higher the torque density. The planetary gearbox arrangement also creates greater stability due to the even distribution of mass and increased rotational stiffness. In a stepped planet system the vibrations are significantly greater than that of a non-compound gearbox. As torque is applied to a cog of one size and transferred on by a cog of another size, the compound gear will experience lateral pull, causing uneven pressure onto the gear teeth, increasing friction and wear, and decreasing gear life. In comparison, torque applied radially onto a non-compound gear will be transferred on radially by the gear, without any lateral pressure onto the gear teeth.
Ideal Gear Constraints and Gear Ratio

Sun-planet worm gear imposes one kinematic constraint on the three connected axes: S = P/RWG + C . The gear has two independent degrees of freedom. The gear pair is (1,2) = (S,P). The torque transfer is:

RWGP + S loss = 0 , C = S, with loss = 0 in the ideal case.

Nonideal Gear Constraints

In a nonideal gear, the angular velocity and geometric constraints are unchanged. But the transferred torque and power are reduced by:

Coulomb friction between thread surfaces on W and G, characterized by friction coefficient k or constant efficiencies [WG, GW] Viscous coupling of driveshafts with bearings, parametrized by viscous friction coefficients SC and WC

The torque transfer for nonideal gear has the general form: S = RWG(P WCP) + instfr , instfr = frtanh(4SC/th) + SCSC . The hyperbolic tangent regularizes the sign change in the friction torque when the sun gear velocity changes sign.

Geometric Surface Contact Friction

In the contact friction case, WG and GW are determined by:

The worm-gear threading geometry, specified by lead angle and normal pressure angle . The surface contact friction coefficient k.

WG = (cos ktan)/(cos + k/tan) , GW = (cos k/tan)/(cos + ktan) .

Constant Efficiencies
In the constant efficiency case, you specify WG and GW, independently of geometric details.

Self-Locking and Negative Efficiency

If you set efficiency for the reverse power flow to a negative value, the train exhibits selflocking. Power can not be transmitted from sun gear to worm and from carrier to worm unless

some torque is applied to the worm to release the train. In this case, the absolute value of the efficiency specifies the ratio at which the train is released. The smaller the train lead angle, the smaller the reverse efficiency.
Meshing Efficiency

The efficiencies of meshing between worm and gear are fully active only if the absolute value of the gear angular velocity is greater than the velocity tolerance. If the velocity is less than the tolerance, the actual efficiency is automatically regularized to unity at zero velocity.
Viscous Friction Force

The viscous friction coefficients of the worm-carrier and sun-carrier bearings control the viscous friction torque experienced by the carrier from lubricated, nonideal gear threads. For details, see the Nonideal Gear Constraints section.