Automotive Engine Flex-plate Design And Experimental Research

In recent years,the automobile market has developed rapidly and the production,sales volume as well as the quantity of China's automobiles have steadily improved.However,China's parts and components enterprises,the upstream industries of the automobile industry,are hovering at the bottom of the industrial chain.The cutting-edge technology of the core automobile components is dominated by foreign-funded enterprises,and technology exposure is strictly prohibited.Domestic component manufacturers can no longer follow only foreign products,but also need to enhance their competitiveness from development capabilities.In addition,the majority of the domestic auto parts enterprises are small and medium enterprises.Standardization and universalization of their products are the principles of survival and development,as well as an important means of saving the development cost.The automotive flex-plate studied in this paper is an important part of automatic transmission chain.It is used to deliver the outputting power and torque from an engine crankshaft to a torque converter.Meanwhile,when starting a vehicle,the starting motor drives the outer ring gear of the flex-plate which make the crankshaft rotates.At work,the flex-plate will bear the torque transmitted between the crankshaft and the torque converter in the starting and normal working conditions,but also absorb the displacement deviation and the centering error when the crankshaft and torque converter are assembled.Moreover,the disk parts working in high-speed rotating state,will be affected by the inertia of the centrifugal force.Therefore,the structural design of the flex-plate needs to reduce the mass and the moment of inertia on the premise of ensuring the strength and stiffness.In the view of the current plentiful vehicles,followed by different grades of performance requirements,the traditional flex-plate has not fully meet the performance needs.The research content of this paper is to design a flex-plate for a certain type of vehicle which needs to bear high torque and axial impact.In this paper,according to the structure,location and performance requirements of the flex-plate equipped with the vehicle,it is designed that the structure of mass-removing hole and plate stretch are changed only,which can ensure that other parts and structures can be shared and used for reference,so as to reduce the development cost.The 3D model is built by Pro/E and applied into the finite element analysis including strength analysis in static conditions,modal analysis,stability analysis,stiffness analysis,fatigue analysis and influence of drilling a balancing hole on the plate.Ensure that the design materials are properly chosen and the structural design is reasonable to meet the requirements of theoretical strength,stiffness and stability.Furthermore,the results of all tests,such as dynamic balance test,stiffness test,mis-alignment test,MTS fatigue test,fatigue test of gear teeth and over-speed test,verify that they are consistent with the finite analysis results.The whole design process is effective and reliable,in line with the development requirements of enterprises.