Influence upon temperature field distribution with straight grooves parameters of clutch friction disk

The instability of the temperature field distribution in clutch friction pair tends to increase exponentially with time when the relative velocity is greater than a certain critical value, which indicates the system enters a state of thermoelastic instability. During high-speed frictional sliding at a high temperature and high pressure, thermoelastic instability will generate local high temperature on friction pair and then cause high-frequency vibration, warping, fatigue fracture, and so on. With the aim of studying the problems arising from local hot spots and the mechanism behind the characteristics of temperature field in friction pair, a thermoelastic finite element analysis model was established for friction pair of heavy-duty vehicle clutch in this paper. The characteristics of thermoelastic stress and temperature distribution under different conditions were obtained by simulation analysis where different values were applied to groove distribution parameters such as number, angle, depth, and width. Experiments were carried out on a friction pair to test its thermoelastic instability. Results show that as the value of each groove distribution parameter increases, the fitting curves of the average temperature, range, and the temperature inhomogeneity coefficient of the temperature field are in forms of oscillation. The average temperature and range have the same trends. The paper concludes that the average temperature range and inhomogeneity coefficient of the temperature field distribute in order, so that the optimized structural parameters were obtained.