Detecting a relative shaft position on geared shafts
AssigneeHamilton Sundstrand Corporation
InventorsGary L. Hess, James A. Gosse, Paul J. Leblanc, James Saloio
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system for determining a relative position of a secondary gear includes a gear assembly including a phonic wheel fixed to a primary gear and a secondary gear rotatably engaged to the first gear, a sensor configured to output a signal upon detecting a tooth of the phonic wheel, and a digital logic circuit configured to detect a revolution of the phonic wheel, to generate a primary gear tooth pulse at intervals corresponding to intervals of teeth of the primary gear based on the detected revolution of the phonic wheel, and to generate a secondary gear revolution signal at an interval corresponding to a revolution of the secondary gear based on the primary gear tooth pulse.
Claims10
A system, comprising:
- a gear assembly including a phonic wheel fixed to a primary gear and a secondary gear rotatably engaged to the primary gear;
- a sensor configured to output a signal upon detecting a tooth of the phonic wheel;
- and
- a digital logic circuit configured to detect the signal, to generate a primary gear tooth pulse at intervals corresponding to intervals of teeth of the primary gear based on the detected signal, and to generate a secondary gear revolution signal at an interval corresponding to a revolution of the secondary gear based on the primary gear tooth pulse;
- wherein the digital logic circuit includes a phonic wheel tooth time counter to count the N teeth of the phonic wheel detected by the sensor and to calculate a first time period for detecting the N teeth;
- wherein the N teeth is a number of total teeth located around a circumference of the phonic wheel;
- and
- wherein the digital logic circuit includes a divider configured to receive from the phonic wheel tooth time counter the first time period for detecting the N number of teeth and to divide the first time period by Y to generate a second time period, where Y corresponds to a total number of teeth located around an outer circumference of the primary gear.
A digital logic circuit, comprising:
- a primary gear revolution counter configured to detect an input signal corresponding to teeth of a phonic wheel having a same rotation rate as a primary gear and to output a primary gear revolution signal upon detecting N teeth of the phonic wheel, where N is a number of teeth of the phonic wheel greater than one and less-than-or-equal-to a total number of teeth of the phonic wheel;
- a primary gear tooth pulse generator configured to receive the primary gear revolution signal and to generate a primary gear tooth pulse at a first interval of time corresponding to an interval of time at which a tooth of the primary gear passes a predetermined location;
- a secondary gear revolution pulse generator configured to generate a secondary gear revolution signal upon detecting Z primary gear tooth pulses, wherein Z corresponds to a total number of teeth of a secondary gear;
- a phonic wheel tooth time counter configured to detect a first time period over which the N teeth are detected;
- and
- a divider configured to divide the first time period by (X/N)*Y to generate a second time period, wherein X corresponds to a total number of teeth of the phonic wheel and Y corresponds to a total number of teeth of the primary gear,
- wherein the primary gear tooth pulse generator generates the primary gear tooth pulse based on the primary gear revolution signal and the second time period.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.