A THREE-DIMENSIONAL FINITE ELEMENT APPROACH TO GROOVED DRY CLUTCHES ANALYSIS

This paper presents three-dimensional thermal model, performed transient thermal analysis of thermoelastic contact for the grooved dry friction clutches. Analysis has been completed to investigate the effect of radial and/or circumferential grooves on the temperature field and the amount of heat transferred by convection for dry friction clutch during a single engagement under uniform pressure and wear conditions. The effect of groove area ratio (GR) (GR, defined as the groove area divided by the nominal contact area) is investigated. Furthermore, this paper presents the equations for energy considerations and energy balance at any time for the friction clutch system. The numerical results show that the amount of energy transferred by convection of friction material can be controlled (within a limitation) by adjusting the value of groove area ratio. The ANSYS13 has been used to perform the numerical computations in this paper.