Search

Failures of multi-plate clutches must be reliably excluded due to safety-critical functionalities in the drive train. The main reason for failures of multi-plate clutches due to long-term and spontaneous damage is thermal damage. In this paper, a parameterizable two-dimensional finite element model is developed and validated for damage prevention and for analyzing the thermo-mechanical behavior of a clutch in transient operation. Both numerical verification and validation with experimental results are very good despite the simplifications in the model. Subsequently, the temperature and pressure distribution of the individual friction areas is determined. The results show that the maximum temperatures tend to occur at the outer diameter of the friction area. The pressure distribution is very homogeneous. In a parameter study, the influence of Young's modulus of the friction lining, the thermal conductivity of the friction lining, and the steel plate thickness on the temperature and pressure behavior in the clutch is investigated. Although the Young's modulus of the friction lining influences the pressure distribution in the friction contact, the temperature behavior is only slightly changed by the variation of the elastic modulus due to the load case. The thermal conductivity of the lining and steel plate thickness have a strong influence on the temperature level in the clutch. However, the distribution of pressures is still very homogeneous compared to the reference model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dry friction clutch is an important part in vehicles, which has more than one function, but the most important function is to connect and disconnect the engine (driving part) with driven parts. This work presents a developed numerical solution applying a finite element technique in order to obtain results with high precision. A new three-dimensional model of a single-disc clutch operating in dry conditions was built from scratch. As the new model represents the real friction clutch including all details, the complexity in the geometry of the clutch is considered one of the difficulties that the researchers faced using the numerical solution. The thermal behaviour of the friction clutch during the slip phase was studied. Meanwhile, in the second part of this work, the transient thermal equations were derived from scratch to find the analytical solution for the thermal problem of a clutch disc in order to verify the numerical results. It was found, after comparison of the numerical results with analytical results, that the results of the numerical model are very accurate and the difference between them does not exceed 1%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]