Planetary Gear System Report

One of projects that I worked on my sophomore year was a design project for Mechanical Systems. I, along with my partner Josh Krsek, designed a planetary gear system model. My design and communication work in my Mechanical Systems Presentation has allowed me to work both individually and as a team to accurately model and simulate a planetary gear system. As seen on slide #5, effectively communicating the results of the project was important to show that our models and calculations could be applied to any planetary gear system. My role throughout this project was to utilize a variety of software such as SolidWorks and Matlab to create and simulate the planetary gear system and figures to show how the results of process were accurate. Because such complicated and technical work can be difficult to follow, our main goal was to present the process in a manner in which any student with Mechanical Systems background could fully understand and follow. One challenge I faced throughout the design process was that the plots from the SolidWorks simulation had sharp spikes at the start of the simulation that caused the figure axis to be zoomed too far out. To solve this problem, I exported the simulation data from SolidWorks to an excel file and used Matlab to edit and create a smoother figure. Throughout my engineering career, being able to utilize a variety of software to validate the results of modeled simulations will be an important skill to have.