A model of load distribution over threads of planetary roller screw mechanism (PRSM) is developed according to the relationships of deformation compatibility and force equilibrium. In order to make the applied load of PRSM uniformly distributed over threads, an improvement approach is proposed, in which the parameters of thread form of roller and nut are redesigned, and the contact conditions of roller with screw and nut are changed to compensate the axial accumulative deformation of shaft sections of screw and nut. A typical planetary roller screw mechanism is taken as example to analyze the load distribution, and the effects of installation configurations, load conditions and thread form parameters on load distribution are studied. Furthermore, the improvement approach is applied to the PRSM, and it is proved to be beneficial to reach uniform load distribution over threads.

A comprehensive contact analysis model to determine the contact positions and clearances of mating thread surfaces in the planetary roller screw mechanism (PRSM) is proposed in this paper. By introducing a three-dimensional clearance vector, the modified conditions of continuous tangency of mating surfaces are established, in which the clearances along all the directions and contact positions of an arbitrary pair of mating surfaces can be calculated. The deviations of the screw, roller, and nut from their nominal positions are considered in the transformation matrices, which describe the position relations of the screw, roller, and nut. Then, the equations of thread surfaces with deviations are derived. Using the modified conditions and the equations of surfaces, the meshing equations at the screw–roller and nut–roller interfaces are derived to compute the clearances along all the directions and contact positions of mating thread surfaces on each pair of thread teeth in the imperfect PRSM. The effectiveness of the proposed model is verified by comparing the contact positions at the screw–roller interface with those from the previously published model. Then, the effect of the direction of clearance vector on the clearances and contact positions is analyzed and discussed. Because of the roller deviation, the clearances between multiple pairs of thread teeth are no longer identical, and the contact positions of a pair of mating thread surfaces on different pairs of thread teeth are different. Also, the parameters of a PRSM without clearances can be obtained from the proposed model in the design process.

As a more powerful transmission device, planetary roller screws (PRSs) recently have received more attention, compared to conventional ball screws. However, due to the complicated and unclear relationships among the PRS components’ parameters, it is difficult to design high-quality PRSs. To facilitate the PRS design, a new study on the parameter relationships of PRS is conducted in this work. New models of the axial stiffness and the frictional moment of PRS are developed, and the relationships of the axial stiffness and the frictional moment in terms of contact angle, helical angle, and tooth number of the roller thread are investigated. This study could contribute to the research of PRS to improve its transmission performance, especially to increase its positioning accuracy.

Planetary roller screw (PRS), with higher thrust, higher load capacity, and higher speed, is the best choice of the transmission component of the servo system. However, spinning sliding of rollers and support bearings can cause frictional moments and frictional heat, which is an undesirable phenomenon. Besides, frictional heat will further result in high temperature that causes deterioration of lubrication and eventually lead to destruction of the mechanism. Therefore, it is important to predict frictional moments which result in frictional heat. In order to predict the magnitude of frictional heat of PRS mechanism and study the influence of structural parameters of thread and operating conditions on frictional heat, first, a frictional moment model of bearings is built, and frictional moments models of PRS considering the elastic hysteresis of material, the spinning sliding of the rollers, the viscosity of lubricating oil and the differential sliding of thread raceways are established in this paper, respectively. Second, heat generation models of bearing and PRS are presented, respectively. Finally, relationships between frictional heat in terms of operating conditions of PRS, contact angle, and helix angle of roller thread are investigated. The achievements of this project will provide theoretical basis for the design of PRS with lower frictional moments and higher transmission efficiency.

A model is proposed to calculate load distribution over threads of planetary roller screw mechanism (PRSM) with pitch deviation. Firstly, four kinds of machining errors of threads including pitch deviation, deviation of thread angle, division error of multiple threads and deviation of pitch diameter are analyzed, and the relationships among them are investigated. After analyzing the relationships among the errors, pitch deviation is chosen to be the main machining error to investigate because it can reflect the effects of other machining errors, and is the most influential machining error on the contact condition and deformation compatibility relationship, i.e. the load distribution of PRSM. Based on the proposed model, the effects of pitch deviation on the load distribution of PRSM are studied through numerical analyses, and load distributions under different machining precisions are analyzed. In order to experimentally verify the investigation, two PRSM samples are measured and tested under the same experimental conditions. The experimental results show that load distributions over threads will fluctuate because of the existence of pitch deviations. The pitch deviations, load distributions over threads and wear depths of threads in the samples show obvious accordance, which indirectly demonstrates the effects of pitch deviation on load distribution.