AUTOMATIC IDENTIFICATION OF REDUNDANT GEARS IN PLANETARY GEAR TRAINS

Redundant gears should be eliminated in the design of automatic transm issions in order to reduce inertial power loss and manufacturing costs . The purpose of this paper is to present a computerized method for th e identification of redundant gears in planetary gear trains. First, t he graph representation of planetary gear trains proposed by Hsu and L am [1-3] is applied to clarify the kinematic structure. Next, based on the concept of fundamental circuits, the criterion for identifying th e existence of redundant gears in a planetary gear train is deduced. U sing the notation of adjacency matrix, a computer program has been dev eloped for the automatic analysis of the existence of redundant gears in planetary gear trains. The result of this study is of benefit to th e design of automatic transmissions for the automobile