Thermal And Fatigue Analysis Of A Heavy-duty Truck Clutch Cover Assembly

As a very important part of a mechanical drive vehicles, which use internal combustion engine as power source, the clutch is used to join and cut off the power transmission of the vehicles’ powerline. Because of dry-type diaphragm spring clutch has a small operating force, stable performance, nowadays a lot of cars especially heavy-duty trucks in the market perefer to use dry-type diaphragm spring clutch to bring about power transmission.Supported by a company, in this paper, some finit element analysis, which based on some clutch design specifications and technical Guidelines, adout some important parts of a Φ430dry-type diaphragm spring clutch cover assembly in a heavy-duty truck have been done, such as:the pressure-plate, the diaphragm spring and the clutch cover. In this whole paper, we assumed that all the heat will be completely absorbed by the clutch pressure plate and the friction plates during the whole clutch friction process, so we just need to do the thermal analysis of the pressure-plate based on the company’s demands. Firstly this paper through the Pro/E software established the pressure plate3D model, secondly established the heat conduction physical model of the working clutch, then established the finite element model by using Hypermesh, finally analyzed out of the pressure-plate’s temperature field and thermal stress filed distribution by using the ABAQUS software. After the thermal analysis, we also compared the pressure-plate’s temperature field to the results, which based by testing,to verify the correctness of the finite element model.After all above this,a fatigue analysis based on the thermal analysis has been done. As to the diaphragm spring and clutch cover, we just do the mechanical analysis of the structure and it’s performance, we also used Pro/E and Hypermesh software to establish the finite element model according to the clutch’s actual work situation, then used MSC.Nastran to do the nonlinear analysis of the diaphragm spring and linear analysis of the clutch cover in order to get the load deformation characteristic curve and stress distribution, then a fatigue analysis based on the nonlinear and linear analysis also has been done. This article is the corporate research improved clutch cover assembly simulation data and provided some reference for the related optimization improvements.