The Perimeter Loop-Based Method for the Automatic Isomorphism Detection in Planetary Gear Trains

Planetary gear trains (PGTs) are widely used in transmission systems. The structural synthesis of PGTs is an effective way to create novel and excellent transmissions. In the structural synthesis of PGTs, the isomorphism detection (ID) is an essential and especially important process. The ID aims to avoid duplication and guarantee the uniqueness of each PGT. The reliability of the ID method directly determines the accuracy of the synthesis result. Unfortunately, when the existing ID methods are used to synthesize PGTs, the synthesis results are not consistent with each other. A very important reason is that the ID methods fail to work in some cases. This fact gives rise to the need of an extremely reliable ID method, which may resolve the contradiction in the existing synthesis results in the future. In this paper, our previous perimeter loop-based ID method, which is applicable for linkage kinematic chains and has been proved to be reliable and efficient, is improved to detect isomorphic PGTs. The improvements relative to our previous method are discussed in detail. The present method is fully automated with the aid of a computer program, and verified by the atlas of PGTs with up to six links, as well as some PGTs with seven, eight, and ten links.