Severity of tip-out induced impacts in drive line systems with backlash

Numerical simulations are used to study the transient behavior of a four degree-of-freedom, rotational piecewise linear system. This study focuses on the impact between bodies in a system with backlash as a result of a sudden step input and the associated transient response. The subsequent single sided impacts and double sided impacts are studied as a function of the amplitude of the step input and the size of the backlash. Transitions have been observed between double sided impact regions and single sided impact regions, which agree with earlier findings. However, in this paper a more complete overview of the boundaries is given. The severity of the impacts is quantified with the peak-to-peak acceleration of the impacting bodies. The increase in the size of step input increases the severity of the impacts. However, the increase in backlash size leads to an extremum in impact severity. This is a possible explanation for seeming contradictions in literature.