Noise issues from gear and motor excitation whine are commonly faced by many within the EV and HEV industry. In this paper the authors present an advanced CAE methodology for troubleshooting and optimizing such NVH phenomenon.

Vehicle gear noise testing is a complex and often misunderstood subject. Gear noise is really a system problem.(1) most gearing used for power transmission is enclosed in a housing and, therefore, little or no audible sound is actually heard from the gear pair.(2) The vibrations created by the gears are amplified by resonances of structural elements. This amplification occurs when the speed of the gear set is such that the meshing frequency or a multiply of it is equal to a natural frequency of the system in which the gears are mounted.