Dynamic stress analysis of roller clutch sleeve

Abstract

This paper explains the application of the Finite Element Method to the dynamic analysis of roller clutch sleeves which largely find their application in starter motors. The present approach is semi-analytic which reduces the three-dimensional problem to a two-dimensional one. The sleeve is taken as a rotationally symmetric solid. The cross section is divided into triangular elements. The first few natural frequencies and their associated eigenvectors are obtained using a simultaneous iteration scheme. The transient force function is expanded into Fourier series and the problem is solved independently for each Fourier index. The first few converged natural frequencies and the associated eigenvectors are used for finding the response of the sleeve using modal superposition technique. The displacements and stresses are computed for each harmonic and are combined to get final displacements and stresses for each time step.