Analytical and Numerical Solutions for the Thermal Problem in a Friction Clutch System

Abstract

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%.

Keywords

• friction clutches
• transient thermal problem
• FE solution
• analytical solution