Dynamic modeling and analysis of a shaft system with the floating spline and angular misalignment

Floating splines are widely used in aerospace and marine power transmission systems. The angular misalignment is one primary form of misalignment in the floating splined shaft systems. Most previous works ignored the spline tooth meshing stiffness (TMS) variations caused by the meshing point differences along the tooth width direction, which did not comprehensively consider the combined influences of additional radial forces, axial force, and torque induced by the angular misalignment. These issues may reduce the accuracy of the calculated dynamics for floating splined shaft systems. Therefore, a spline force model including six-directional excitations induced by the angular misalignment is presented. Moreover, a meshing force calculation model considering the meshing point changes along the tooth width direction is proposed. The accuracy of the proposed spline force model and the floating splined shaft dynamic model is validated by the experiments. Then, the influence of angular misalignment on the dynamics of the floating splined shaft system is analyzed. The underlying mechanisms are also investigated.