Effect of Shaft Elasticity on the Performance of Slip Energy Recovery Drives

All rotating shafts, even in the absence of external load, deflect during rotation. The magnitude of the deflection depends upon the stiffness of the shaft, its supports and also upon the load level. In this paper, a complete study of the effect of shaft elasticity or stiffness coefficient on the performance of a slip energy recovery drive (SERD) has been presented. The elastic shaft model is derived through the use of Lagrange formulation and it is incorporated into the slip SERD model. A computer program is developed to analyze the complete performance of the drive including the effect of shaft elasticity. A load torque that is a quadratic function of the shaft speed is assumed throughout the analysis. Numerous computer simulations were carried out to illustrate the performance of the SERD with elastic transmission for different stiffness coefficients of the shaft material, taking into account the effects of changing the modulus of elasticity and shaft dimensions.