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Updated: Oct 13, 2025

Parametric Optimization Design Method for Friction Plates of Hydro-Viscous Clutches
Published on: July 22, 2025
Influence of Material Parameters on the Contact Pressure Characteristics of a Multi-Disc Clutch
Yujian Liu1, Man Chen1, Liang Yu1,2
1School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
Abstract:
As an essential part of the transmission, the life of the clutch directly affects the stability of the transmission. In this paper, a finite element model and a thermodynamic numerical model of a multi-disc clutch are established to investigate the influence of material parameters on the contact pressure distribution. The pressure distribution index (PDI) is firstly proposed to evaluate the pressure difference among friction pairs. Moreover, the correctness of the numerical model is verified by the clutch static pressure experiment. The results show that increasing the elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio of the backplate can effectively improve the uniformity of the contact pressure. However, the variations in material parameters of other clutch components can not easily smooth the pressure difference. Therefore, optimized material parameters for the clutch are proposed, where the maximum pressure and temperature differences are reduced by about 27.2% and 10.3%, respectively.
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