Study on the Influence of Gear Spoke Hole Numbers on Meshing Noise

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This manuscript presents the theory and experiment comparison for gear pair spoke holes number influence on meshing stiffness and noise. The theoretical analysis for gear pair meshing stiffness is studied in the manuscript, and the meshing stiffness and noise change amplitude trend about the increase on the gear spoke experiments verify holes number. The paper is well written with some suggestions/observations listed below:

 

(1) Since there is no direct comparison between the experimental data and the simulation results, the amplitude of the changing trend can be specifically written to intuitively display the correlation comparison between the experimental results and the simulation results.

(2) The first letter of table 1 shall be capitalized. And some language expressions in the manuscript need to be improved.

(3) In Figure 10,11,12, the font size should be amplified.

 

(4) The “stiff” in Figure 4 should be written as “stiffness”.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The article needs serious revision. There are many incomprehensible phrases. All abbreviations must be spelled out. It is necessary to describe how the calculations were carried out both by the finite element method and by the boundary element method. All input data should be provided so that other researchers can make similar calculations and compare results.

Probably, it is necessary to significantly improve both the presentation in English and the scientific content. It is very difficult to list all the defects, because there are many of them. I will cite only the following claims.

Why are expressions equal to zero given: in (1) there are differences of identical angles, and in (2) the first term after equality contains the difference of identical values. It is not clear how arrays are multiplied in (1) with each other and another array is obtained as a result. The phrase should not go into the picture (line 192). It is not clear what calculations resulted in Figure 4 and other figures. What is a displacement diagram (Figure 5) since displacement is a vector. What is 'Normal offset' and where is it calculated. Figures 10-12 are not informative at all, and much is not visible on them.

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

In the present paper, under the title “Study on the influence of the spoke hole numbers on the meshing stiffness”, the authors refer that the one spur gear pair is taken as the research object, and the finite element numerical analysis method is used to analyze the influence of the gear spoke hole numbers on the meshing stiffness and noise under the condition of constant speed and resistance moment.

The work submitted for publication in the journal Applied Sciences has very appreciable flaws in the different fundamental aspects that are expected to be part of a scientific publication. In summary we can highlight:

 In the introduction, bibliographical research is carried out involving the reference to 19 works published, essentially, in the last six years and includes 5 works published in Chinese, which obviously makes it difficult to analyze the work carried out when, as is the case, it is based a lot on these last 6 references. A very partial description of the studies carried out on this subject is presented, when there have already been fundamental works for dozens of years and which should be mentioned. For merely illustrative purposes, see the work "Mesh stiffness models for cylindrical gears: A detailed review", https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2021.104472, journal Mechanism and Machine Theory, where 161 references are presented on published fundamental works.

In the presentation of models, simulations and results there are very serious flaws, such as the presentation of equations without any reference to their source, final equations without any presentation of the methodologies used to obtain them. Figures are referred to in the text without any explicit indication of which one it is.

They refer to the use of results obtained using the finite element method without referring to essential questions such as what type of elements were used, the number of elements, the mesh used, boundary conditions,.... They present graphs of results without any meaningful framing of how they were obtained.

As a significant example of the lack of rigor in the work presented, on page 11 in item 4, lines 278 and 279, the authors write the sentence: "Due to the limitation of the experimental environment, the error of directly measuring the sound pressure level change is large".

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The article has gotten better, but still needs to be improved.

 The input data is still incompletely described. Aren't material properties involved in calculations (Young's modulus, etc.)? Were contact elements used in ANSYS calculations? I did not find any new information about the technique of calculations using the boundary element method.

 The quality of the article is still not sufficient. A lot of phrases start with the word “Where”. If this is a continuation of the last phrase, then there should not be a paragraph indent and the word should begin with a small letter. What does the big dot in (7) mean? Why is it present in the first term and absent in the second? What does the x operation in (12) mean? If this is a multiplication operation, then why is this sign used only here? Usually, solid185 is written in capital letters and it is necessary to indicate that here we are talking about ANSYS.

  Figures 10-12 are of poor quality. The scale of values on them is very blurred. In addition, the figures would greatly benefit if each figure had one scale. (It is possible to set a fixed scale in ANSYS, but I don't know if this can be done in BEM calculations.) With one scale, the color palette in (a)-(e) would be comparable and the figures would look better.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx