Research On The Calculation Method Of The Efficiency Of Harmonic Drive Based On ABAQUS

Because of its compact structure, light weight and zero backlash characteristics, harmonic drive is widely used in the fields of aviation and spaceflight, mechanism, optics, etc. While, on occasion of transmitting motion and power, the transmission efficiency is one of the most important indexes to characterize whether comprehensive mechanical properties are good or not. Therefore, how to calculate the transmission efficiency accurately to evaluate its performance is of great importance. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.50975038), this paper studies on the main power loss of harmonic drive, and establishes a calculation method of power consumption based on ABAQUS. The amount of tooth meshing friction loss and wave generator of flexible rolling bearing friction loss is considered in this method.Firstly, for the friction loss of tooth meshing, the contact pressure and area of the meshing tooth are calculated by using the finite element software ABAQUS in this paper. And then combining the average contact pressure of each node instead of the contact pressure of the whole meshing tooth with the average slip rate of tooth surface, the friction loss of the meshing tooth is calculated. For the friction loss of the flexible bearing, based on some assumptions, by solving the rolling load distribution in the loading area of flexible rolling bearing and the rolling speed of inner and outer rings, a calculation method of friction loss of rolling system of cam wave generator with flexible rolling bearing is also proposed. According to the method mentioned above, the friction loss of the harmonic reducer in XB80-100in the process of transmission is calculated, resulting in the friction loss on different loads. The MATLAB GUI interface is drawn up. which improves the computational efficiency of the post processing.Secondly, the experimentation of power loss measurement of the harmonic reducer in XB80-100is introduced. The experimental results show that, the drive efficiency of harmonic reducer is between76.90%and84.15%, and it decreases with the load increasing. The relative error between the friction loss calculated by using the method above and the experimental results is up8.18%with the comparison of the conclusion of experimentation and calculation, which proves that the calculation method is applicable and some validity. Thirdly, based on the research result of elastic meshing theory of the harmonic drive by the research group, the double circular arc tooth profile is used instead of the original rigid gear involute tooth profile to solve its conjugate flexspline tooth profile. Meshing tooth surface loss is obtained by using the method of solving the power loss above, the result is reduced by9.31%～14.14%compared with the friction loss of the involute profile, which reflects the superiority of the performance of the conjugate tooth using the harmonic drive kinematic geometry model and provides a basis for the design of the new tooth profile of harmonic drive.