Research on the Soft-Starting Characteristics of Wet Clutches in TBM Cutter-Head Driving System

Abstract

This article proposes to apply wet clutches to the cutter-head driving system of tunneling boring machine TBM and also investigates the soft-starting transmission characteristics of the wet clutch under three different strategies. The strategies discussed here refer to the engagement rules of plates in wet clutches, and they are: positive parabola, straight line, negative parabola. The numerical simulations corresponding to those strategies are carried out in the FLUENT, and the result indicates that the numerical method is valid for the good agreement with the analytical one. After comparing the simulation results, we conclude that the positive parabolic engagement strategy can be preferred during the soft-starting of TBM cutter-head if the invalid starting time, starting smoothness and heat dissipation are regarded as the evaluation standard.