On the applicability of static modes switching in gear contact applications

Contact modeling is an active research area in the field of multibody dynamics. Despite the important research effort of the last decades, two main challenging issues, namely accuracy and speed, are far from being jointly solved. One main issue remains the current lack of model order reduction schemes capable of efficiently treat systems where multiple, a priori unknown, input-output locations are present. This work discusses how a methodology named static modes switching can be extended for its use in gear contact simulation. The method proposes an on line strategy for the selection of residual attachment modes for accurate local deformation prediction. The applicability of the method is discussed by means of several numerical experiments. The result is an indication that the static modes switching underlying idea can be applied also in case of impulsive phenomena like gear impacts. Moreover, a numerical study on penalty factor values and number of eigenmodes and residual attachment modes shows an interesting relation between these three quantities, the dynamic behavior of the system and the solution accuracy. Finally, some simulations are performed to compare the adopted model order reduction strategy with a reference non-linear finite element simulation.