DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
Zengxin Gao1, Kari Saine1, Magnus Wollström2, Ulf Carlsson3
1 Wärtsilä Finland Oy 2 Lloyd’s Register Group – ØDS Canada
Järvikatu 2-4, P.O. Box 244
[email protected] FI-65101 Vaasa
[email protected] 3 Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Sweden
[email protected] [email protected]1 INTRODUCTION
In this investigation, the noise inside and outside of the engine cam gear cover has been stud-
ied. The engines under test are Wärtsilä 32 engines, with 320 mm cylinder bore, at nominal
speed 750 rpm and idle, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% load conditions.
A schematic picture of the gear train with indicated gear teeth numbers and real pictures of
gears on both gas and diesel engines are shown in Figure 1:
Figure 1 Left, schematic picture of the gear train system; Middle, gas engine cam gear; Right,
diesel engine gear train.
2 MAIN CAUSES OF GEAR NOISE
A. Caused by the bearing misalignment, position errors, machining or process errors of
gear shape and tooth shape, worn tooth, temperature variation, etc.;
B. Transmission Error caused by stiffness variation resulting in dynamic mesh forces;
The vibration excitation and resulting noise generated by an involute gearing, with proper lu-
brication to minimize friction, is minimal but not zero. Vibrations will always occur since the
teeth and bodies of real gears are elastic, thus the loaded gear teeth are no longer involute be-
cause of deformation when the gears are transmitting torque. Therefore stiffness variation is
generated which will lead to transmission error causing dynamic mesh forces. Besides, load
variation caused by the change of the number of meshing teeth will also result in stiffness va-
riation, Figure 2 Left.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
Figure 2 Left, Gears with different numbers of teeth in contact, ε α is the transverse contact
ratio [1]; Right, Gear teeth backlash [2].
C. Caused by impact of the rattling gear teeth generating rattling noise;
The gear rattling is also called the gear hammering or impact. The reason why running gear
can impact each other on teeth is because of the existing of backlash which can be defined as
a rotational arc clearance formed between a pair of mounted gears, Figure 2 Right.
The rattling noise mostly generated by the speed or load fluctuation on shafts. It is predicted
beforehand that the Wärtsilä engine gear train noise is mainly caused by gear impact since the
fuel injection force applied on the camshaft will generate a large shaft torque variation.
3 THE MECHANICAL FUEL INJECTION
The measured engines in this paper are all equipped with mechanical fuel injection system.
For mechanical injectors, the increased injection pressure can lead to significant increase of
the camshaft torque variation, Figure 3.
Figure 3 Camshaft piece with part of the driven injection pump and the valve trains [3], the
contact profile between the injection cam and the roller being magnified on the left.
As shown in the Figure 3, when the roller runs on the opening ramp, the force Fn will gener-
ate a positive torque on the camshaft as a load that intends to block the camshaft rotation, and
when the roller is on the closing ramp, the injection pump then gives the camshaft a negative
torque that actually helps drive the camshaft rotation. Thus, during one period of fuel injec-
tion, the torque applied on the camshaft from the injection pumping varies between positive
and negative periodically.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
4 MECHANISMS OF ENGINE GEAR TRAIN HAMMERING NOISE
Because of the camshaft torque variation and the existing of gear backlash, gear hammering
happens. At first, the angular speeds of the two gears are ideally the same and the gear teeth
are in mesh with each other, Figure 4 Left-A. When one injection process is over, the torque
on the camshaft will turn to negative. Then the angular speed of the cam gear will be faster
than the driving gear and teeth separation starts, Figure 4 Left-B. During this period the cam
gear teeth will pass through the backlash and collide with the non-working side of the driving
gear teeth, Figure 4 Left-C. When the next injection comes, the cam gear rotation is deceler-
ated, which means the cam gear will pass through the backlash, Figure 4 Left-D, and impact
with the working side of the driving gear teeth again, Figure 4 Left-E.
Figure 4 Left, cam gearing teeth impact [4]; Right, crank gearing pair speeds comparison.
Moreover, there is also torque variation on the crankshaft due to the periodical combustion
process. The crank gearing teeth impact process is similar with the cam gearing. Figure 4
Right is given with the simplification that: 1st the impact on either tooth side of a gear occurs
only once for each one meshing period; 2nd there is static load on the intermediate shaft.
The gear impacts on cam gear and crank gear influence each other through the intermediate
shaft. Thus the teeth impact of the engine gear train system is so complex that hard to predict.
Since the impact is of impulse nature, the gear hammering noise should locate in a broad fre-
quency range.
5 THE COMPENSATED SPL MEASUREMENT SYSTEM
A pressure transducer is used and a plywood gear cover is made as the mounting. Meanwhile,
the vibration on the transducer has been measured simultaneously by an accelerometer and
compensated during the sound pressure calculation, Figure 5.
Figure 5 Test setup for the inside sound pressure measurement. The plywood cam gear cover
with rubber on both sides, and the pressure transducer with accelerometer.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
To achieve a better reliability, a pressure transducer is used instead of a microphone. The ac-
celeration on pressure transducer has also been measured since the transducer is sensitive both
to pressure and acceleration. The vibration generated signal is then subtracted. It has been
concluded that 115dB / m / s 2 is a good estimate for the transducer vibration sensitivity [5].
Therefore the equally square value of the sound pressure accepted by transducer caused by
vibration is:
2
pvib = 10 k / 10 ⋅ a 2 ⋅ p ref
2
(1)
where k = 115dB / m / s 2 is the acceleration sensitivity, a is the acceleration and
pref = 2 × 10−5 Pa is the reference sound pressure. Then the compensated SPL that we are
really interested in is calculated as:
ptr 2
SPLcomp. = 10 ⋅ log(( ) − 10k / 10 ⋅ a 2 ) (2)
pref
where ptr is the total pressure signal perceived by the transducer.
6 MEASUREMENT RESULTS
1) Sound Power Radiated by Covers (based on intensity scanning method)
Figure 6 A-weighted sound power levels for some of the operating side covers on W6L32
(left) and W8L32 (right), nominal speed, 100% load. 100-10kHz.
From Figure 6, the sound power level over the gear covers is the highest for both engines.
Therefore the engine block vibration level at the gear end must also be the highest.
2) Engine Block Vibration
Figure 7 Left, defined measurement positions on the operating side of engine block, red dots;
Right, 0-2kHz overall results of engine block vibration, 100% load.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
Reasonably, in Figure 7, engine block vibrates more at gear end than at free end and middle
part. The excitation of the engine block vibration is mainly contributed from the shaft bear-
ings which transfer a lot of vibration from shafts. The vibration of shafts is generated mainly
from: 1st, impulsive piston movement from crank shaft, 2nd, fuel injection pumping force ap-
plied on camshaft and 3rd, the gear train vibration on all shafts. Considering the 1st and the 2nd
causes of vibration has the same effect on the free end, middle part and the gear end, the au-
thor claims that the higher vibration level at gear end is from the gear train vibration.
3) Sound Pressure inside the Cam Cover
First, after the transducer vibration being compensated, the sound pressure level of W9L32
(diesel) and W9L34SG (gas) engines is plotted in one-third octave band in Figure 8:
140 140
130 130
SPL (dB)
SPL (dB)
120 120
110 110
100 100
90 90
BA
0
00
50
00
00
00
50
00
50
00
00
00
50
A
50
63
80
50
63
80
dB
10
12
16
20
25
31
10
12
16
20
25
31
d
ll,
l,
al
ra
er
e
ov
f (Hz)
ov
f (Hz)
d
d
te
te
gh
gh
ei
ei
idle 25% 50% 75% 100% idle 25% 50% 75% 100%
w
w
A-
A-
Figure 8 W9L34SG (left) and W9L32 (right) one-third octave band sound pressure level in-
side the cam gear cover at different load conditions.
The load increase has an influence on the cam cover inside noise of the diesel engine but no
influence for the gas engine. The author claims that it is because for a diesel engine, the fuel
pumping pressure increases with load increase, so the camshaft torsional vibration becomes
larger and the gear train vibration is more intensive, therefore more noise is generated. Gas
engines without fuel injection pump do not have such load variation influences.
Further, the narrow band noise spectra inside cam gear cover are plotted in Figure 9:
150
150 808 Hz 810 Hz
140
210Hz, plywood gear cover first natural frequency 810 Hz
140
363 Hz, Cam gear meshing frequency 810 Hz
130
130
810 Hz, dominant peak
120
SPL (dB)
120
SPL (dB)
110
110
100
90
100
80
675 Hz, Crank gear meshing frequency 90
70
358 Hz, after which the SNR is always positive
60 80
0 125 250 375 500 625 750 875 1000 1125 1250 1375 1500 1625 1750 1875 2000 0 125 250 375 500 625 750 875 1000 1125 1250 1375 1500 1625 1750 1875 2000
f (Hz) f (Hz)
original noise level from transducer vibration level from accelerometer W6L32 (750 rpm) W7L32 (720 rpm) W8L32 (750 rpm)
Figure 9 Left, W9L32 cam cover inside noise level and transducer vibration level; Right,
three other In-Line engines noise level. (100% load)
Surprisingly, the noise at gear meshing frequencies does not peak up in Figure 9 Left, which
indicates that the broad band noise caused by gear hammering is so intensive that it has cov-
ered the noise caused by gearing stiffness variation. Besides, a resonant noise around 810Hz
is found. This resonant noise is not found in the result of the broad band sound power level of
the structure-borne noise over the cam gear cover. It is filtered out by the cam gear cover.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
7 SIMULATION RESULTS
A Wärtsilä program [3] based on Matlab has been studied and converted to be applicable to
W9L32 that has been measured in this work. The Simulated W9L32 cam gear meshing force
with ten times magnified camshaft torque at 100% load condition, two crankshaft rotations, is
plotted in Figure 10:
5
x 10
2
cam gear impact force
ten times camshaft torque
1.5
1
force (N); torque (Nm)
0.5
-0.5
-1
-1.5
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16
time (s)
Figure 10 W9L32 cam gear meshing force with ten times magnified camshaft torque at 100%
load condition, two crankshaft rotations.
At the place where there are small peaks on the curve of the camshaft torque, the gear ham-
mering force is intensive, which indicates that it is the gear hammering that drives the gear
train and the gear meshing teeth are for most of the time out of contact.
8 CONCLUSIONS
In order to simplify the gear noise mechanism, Figure 11 has been drawn. Red colour is origi-
nal excitations of gear train noise, the blue colour is the vibration transmission path and the
green colour is the generated noise.
Figure 11 The basic noise generation mechanism with the excitation (red), transmission
(blue) and radiation (green) clarified.
All in all, for diesel engines, because of the impulsive fuel injection pumping pressure and the
impulsive combustion force, there is torsional vibration on both camshaft and the crankshaft.
Gear hammering dominates in the gear train noise generation mechanism. Gear impact will
aggravate engine block vibration at the gear end, which makes the gear covers radiate more
broad band structure-borne noise along the engine body. Besides, the gear hammering is also
one of the most important excitation of a resonant noise inside the cam gear cover.
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Gao, Saine, Wollström, Carlsson DIESEL ENGINE GEAR TRAIN NOISE
9 FUTURE WORK AND IMPROVEMENT
To get a better understanding of gear hammering, the following work is suggested:
a) Measure the acceleration on the bearings in the direction of the tooth mesh force and the
mobility of the bearings at the same positions as used for the acceleration measurements,
so that an indication of the teeth meshing forces can be obtained.
b) Use the difference in instant revolution speeds between the intermediate shaft and the
camshaft as another measure to visualize the gear hammering phenomenon.
c) Vibration level on both the cam and crank gear covers and on the engine structure close to
covers should be measured in several positions.
d) Sound power over gear covers should be measured in narrow band analysis.
For significant gear hammering noise reduction, one should consider introducing additional
compliance in the gear train while maintaining cam to crank timing [6], for instance, devices
which could effectively places a nonlinear, tuned torsional spring between the rotating shaft
and gear. Another option could be fuel system vibration damper.
Besides, scissors gear which can eliminate the backlash, and thus gear hammering, could also
be considered. Gear covers could also be changed to the ones with less radiation efficiency.
REFERENCES
1. MackAldener, M., Department of Machine design, KTH, Stockholm. “Tooth Interior Fa-
tigue Fracture & Robustness of gears”, 22 May, 2001. Ph.D. Thesis. ISSN 1400-1179.
2. INTERNET, http://www.wikipedia.org.
3. Kaas, J., “Camshaft Dynamics”, Master thesis work at Wärtsilä.
4. Barthod, M. Hayne, B. Tebec J.-L. and Pin, J./C., “Experimental Study of Dynamic and
Noise Produced by a Gearing Excited by a Multi-harmonic Excitation”, Applied Acous-
tics 68 (2007) 982-1002.
5. Aura, M., “Combustion Engine Exhaust Noise”, Master thesis work at Wärtsilä.
6. Derk, J.R., “Effects of Compliant Geartrains on Engine Noise and Performance”, Sound
and Vibration, April 2005.
