Simulation and experimental study on the influence of oil groove structure on the drag torque of the wet clutch

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to design a single and double throat oil groove structure, which can reduce the drag torque of the wet clutch. Design/methodology/approach A three-dimensional simulation model was established herein using the computational fluid dynamics method. The influence of oil groove structure on the oil film flow field and the drag torque is obtained by a simulation. Findings Compared with the traditional radial oil groove, the results show that the single throat oil groove structure reduces the drag torque by about 24.59%; the double throat oil groove reduces the drag torque by about 47.27%. As the speed difference increases, the average temperature rise of the oil film of the double throat oil groove is 4°C lower than that of the single throat oil groove, indicating that it has good heat dissipation performance. The analysis results were verified by experimental results. Originality/value In this paper, the radial oil groove is taken as the reference object, and the structure of the oil groove is designed and improved. The simulation analysis and experiment verify the rule of the influence of the oil groove structure on the drag torque, which provides a new design idea for reducing the drag torque of wet clutch.