Tool Evaluation & Design Analysis for Parking Pawl Mechanism

Abstract

Abstract: Automatic Transmissions in vehicles are becoming the norm today and with the need to reduce fuel consumption, electric vehicles are increasing in number too. As the vehicles get smarter, transmissions have also felt the need to adapt so as to cope with the demands of the 21st century. Apart from providing the user with different driving modes, vehicles with an Automatic Transmission and electric vehicles have a device called a Park Lock. Park Lock Mechanisms are devices that are fitted to vehicles with an automatic transmission or electric vehicles which can secure the vehicle mechanically in addition to the parking brakes to prevent an unintended movement of the vehicle when the vehicle is brought to a stop. This system can face various kinds of loads coming from the transmission or from the wheel side. So, it is necessary to design a system which can withstand against it. Today, when a park lock mechanism is designed, it is designed in a way that it not only fits one vehicle variant but many variants (these variants can include either front wheel drive, rear wheel drive, vehicles with varying final gear to park lock gear ratios etc). Therefore, one Park Lock Mechanism needs to satisfy various conditions and requirements. Carrying out calculations with different notations for each variant becomes a cumbersome procedure, therefore it is prudent to have one common platform which can do the calculation in the early phases of design. In this paper, a closed form calculationsbased Excel VBA tool can able to estimate the loads coming on to the Park lock mechanism by doing some background calculation is presented followed by the simulation performed using Multi Body Dynamics software (‘ADAMS’). Results from MBD tool and a 1D tool are corelated to the test data to gain some confidence on the tool which created in Excel VBA. Keywords: Park Lock Mechanism, ADAMS, 1D Tool, Excel VBA, Drop in Speed, Torque Build up.