Modelling and simulation of thermal effects in wet clutches operating under boundary lubrication conditions

Abstract

Wet clutches are frequently used in the drive trains of many modern vehicles. The behaviour of the clutches influences the behaviour of the whole drive train and therefore of the whole vehicle. The design of the clutch is very important because it operates in cooperation with the other parts of the drive train. The clutch also often has to work in the lubricant present in the transmission. To optimize the clutch for an application, properties such as disc geometry, materials, friction disc surface, and engagement axial force can be varied when designing the clutch. Today, the design process involves much testing, which is expensive and time consuming. There are no good hand-book solutions or engineering tools available, hence the designer has to be very experienced and often use trial and error methods in order to end up with a working clutch for an application.

A simulation model is developed in this article, which in combination with a simple measurement technique for measuring the boundary lubrication friction coefficient is used to estimate temperature and torque transfer for a wet clutch working under limited slip conditions. The developed simulation model can be used as a design tool for wet clutches. The approach developed in this article can be used to investigate torque behaviour for wet clutches that have not been designed and is, therefore, suitable to use when optimizing the performance of a new clutch. The model includes fluid dynamics, contact mechanics, and temperature computations in the fluid film between the friction disc and the separator disc. Temperature computations in the clutch discs are also included in the model. The fluid dynamics calculations use homogenized flow factors to enable simulations of flow on a coarser grid and still include all surface roughness effects. The temperature distribution in the film in the sliding interface is approximated as a polynomial of the second order. The heat transfer in the grooves of the friction discs is solved by means of an equilibrium equation that includes radial cooling flow effects because of centrifugal flows. The temperature in the friction disc and separator disc is obtained from the solution of the full three-dimensional energy equation in polar cylindrical coordinates.

The model is validated by measurements made in a test rig and good agreement between measurements and simulations is obtained, both with regard to temperature and transfered torque.

The use of this model can reduce the time needed to develop a limited slip wet clutch application since the systematic way of finding the optimal clutch design will be more efficient than the often used Edisonian trial and error approach.