Active shaft transverse vibration control of a spur gear pair system

Most efforts to address gear noise and vibration concerns in the past have been directed at passive control approaches, such as tuning of the geared rotor system modal characteristics, damping treatment, and vibration isolation. In this paper, an alternative approach is suggested using a new active vibration control concept. Specifically, an active shaft transverse vibration control scheme is proposed, which employs a piezeoelectric stack actuator for applying control force through a redundant bearing positioned near the gear pair component. To ease the tracking of the mesh frequencies and improve the performance of the controller, an enhanced filtered-x least mean square algorithm has been developed. Results of experimental study reveal more than 10 dB of reduction in vibration level at the targeted gear mesh harmonic. The prototype is also shown to work well in controlling multiple harmonics simultaneously. A discussion of the active control hardware and software limitations is also presented.