• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.1217-1224
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• 2009

This paper presents a finite element (FE) analysis of the torsional rigidity of a two-stage cycloid drive. The cycloid disk makes contact with a number of pin-rollers simultaneously and eccentric shafts transmit not only torque of the spur gear stage to the cycloid disk, but also that of the cycloid disk to the output disk. Contacts between the disk and pin-rollers are simplified as linear spring elements, and the bearing of eccentric shaft is modeled as a rigid ring that has frictional contact to the disk and an elastic support. FE analysis for an ideal solid cycloid drive was performed and verified by a theoretical calculation. Accurate contact forces were then estimated by iterating between FE analysis for contact forces and Hertz theory calculations for nonlinear contact stiffness. In addition, torsional rigidity of the cycloid drive is analyzed to show that the bearing and nonlinear Hertz contact theory should be considered in analysis and design of a cycloid drive, which was verified with experiments. Finally, the effects of contact stiffness, bearing stiffness and cycloid disk structural stiffness according to the cycloid disk rotation on the torsional rigidity were investigated.