Kinematic Analysis of Epicyclic Bevel Gear Trains With Matroid Method

Abstract

The paper presents a novel technique for the kinematic analysis of bevel gear trains using the incidence matrices of an edge-oriented graph of the mechanism. The kinematic equations are then obtained in matrix form using a cycle basis from a cycle matroid. These equations can be systematically generated, and allow for an efficient computation of the angular velocities of the gears and planet carriers of the mechanism without employing time derivative operations. As illustrated in the paper, the method is applicable to bevel gear trains of any number of gears or degrees of freedom.