Analysis of the parameters of the double clutch drive with reduced control energy consumption

Abstract

The global trend of improving vehicle and traction transmissions is associated with the use of robotic preselector gearboxes, an important component of which is the friction clutch. The review of existing designs and analysis of clutch development concepts allows determining the directions of their improvement, in particular, the improvement of dry double clutches, which is the subject of research in this paper. A significant disadvantage of existing dual-clutch designs is the use of additional special (mostly hydraulic or combined) systems for on-off friction pairs, so the structural cost and energy costs for control are increased, and the design, maintenance, and repair are complicated. The proposed design of the drive to control the original dry dual-clutch involves a lever mechanism with the use of rotary stops, which are made in the form of mobile carriages with rollers, this provides switching clutches in a short time and actually without interruption of power flow, so the acceleration dynamics of vehicles will be improved, the clutch design will be simplified and energy consumption for its control during the start and gear shifting will be reduced. The mathematical model of the proposed clutch drive on the basis of which the control mechanism operation is simulated and influence of its design parameters on operational indicators of the clutch drive, in particular, on kinematic characteristics of the drive, ranges of kinematic and power gear ratios, the power interaction of the mechanism links, the power of the actuator when each clutch is turning on. It is established that the switching of clutches requires less energy, the movement of the mechanism elements is different, and the compression force of the friction pairs when starting the first and second clutches is different. The simulation results confirm that the proposed original lever design of the clutch control mechanism is effective. The obtained results allow us to reasonably determine the parameters of a clutch, but the choice of optimal-rational parameters of its control mechanism requires further research, for which appropriate methods, search algorithms, and their software implementation have been developed.