Design of hydraulic shift mechanism for AMT vehicles based on the collaborative optimization method

Based on multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO), a new design method is put forward for hydraulic shift mechanism of heavy-duty vehicle automated manual transmission (AMT). Taking a shift cylinder for example, the collaborative optimization (CO) method for the design problem of a cylinder is devided into one system level design optimization problem and three subsystem level design optimization problems. The system level is an economic model and the subsystem level is mechanics, kinetics, and a reliability model. Application of the multidisciplinary design optimization software iSIGHT modeling and solving, optimal solution of the shifting cylinder CO model is obtained. According to the optimal solution, oil cylinders are machined out and installed on the gearbox of an AMT system for the bench cycle shift test. The results show that the output force and action speed of the optimized mechanism can meet requirements very well. In addition, the optimized mechanism has a better performance compared to the structure of the traditional design method, which indicates that the CO method can optimize the design of hydraulic transmission.