The vibration problems associated with gear coupled rotors have been the focus of much engineering work. These systems are complex and difficult to analyze in that they have the problems associated with conventional rotors plus those additional problems associated with the gear couplings. This paper examines the problems peculiar to the gear mesh. Because of the meshing action of gears, the elasticity of the gear teeth introduces time-varying stiffness coefficients into the governing equations of motion. This means that system response must be thought of in terms of Mathieu-type equations, where multiple-frequency response occur due to the periodic coefficients. The meshing action of the gears also couples the lateral and torsional gear motions. Gear errors, such as tooth profile and spacing errors, produce forces and torque that excite the system at multiple frequencies, some of which are much higher than shaft rotational speed. To investigate how to the time-varying stiffness in the gear teeth and the gear errors act one the dynamic response of the gear coupled rotors, a three-dimensional dynamic model with lateral-tortional oscillation is developed. The harmonic balance technique is employed to solve this mathieu-type problem.
