Experimental study and thermal analysis on the buckling of friction components in multi-disc clutch

A full-scale multi-disc clutch test bench was set up and some sliding experiments were conducted to investigate the temperature evolution processes in low and high lubrication regimes. Friction discs with single friction lining were used and arranged back-to-back in order to preserve possible evidences of buckling. Temperatures were measured with thermocouples from four different radii on the mid-plane of the separator disc. Two different kinds of temperature variation processes with obvious critical points of cone shape buckling were obtained. These temperatures can be divided into three effective stages that represent different deformation status of the discs in these experiments. The temperature fields in the contacting separator disc and friction disc were studied through a transient heat conduction model, and the results show that the temperatures measured by the thermocouples from the separator disc can represent the average temperatures in both of the separator disc and friction disc for a long sliding time. By comparing the computational critical moments of the friction components with the experimental results, the capability of the curved beam model for predicting the critical moments of cone buckling was validated.