Many new cars are equipped with automatic transmissions. These gearboxes often have a dual clutch transmission (DCT) that has a built-in wet clutch. The lubricants used in these gearboxes is often very advanced because it must take care of two systems, the wet clutch and the gears. There is always a strive to make the drain intervals longer. To do this a fundamental understanding of the aging mechanisms inside a DCT must be understood. This project focuses at the aging of the lubricant and friction material inside the wet clutch. A test rig at Luleå University of Technology is redesigned to be able to age this kind of systems. The test rig contains a wet clutch from Volvo Construction Equipment and the redesign focuses mainly on decreasing the oil sump volume to 6 liter and getting the oil sump to be at 100 °C during the tests. To verify the test rig a test is done that are trying to mimic a test done on a test rig called ZF GK3. The same lubricant, friction material and grove pattern are used as in the test with the ZF GK3. Due to the difference in how the test rigs are built all parameters cannot be held the same during the test. At first the same sliding speed at the mean radius, the average power over an engagement and the oil sump temperature is kept the same. A drop in the static friction can then be seen over time. This was however not the expected behavior. The sliding speed is therefore increased which also increases the average power and transferred energy per engagement. This has also big effects on the temperature inside the clutch. A drop in the coefficient of friction can then be seen at 50 % of the sliding speed which also is seen on the test carried out on the ZF GK3. This verifies that the test rig can be used for aging of these kind of systems.The aging that takes place seems to be dependent on the temperature inside the clutch.

BorgWarner Powerdrive Systems is constantly developing the performance of wet clutches used in passenger car all-wheel drive systems. The Haldex limited slip coupling, LSC, is the trade name of the all-wheel drive system sold and developed by BorgWarner Powerdrive Systems. In a primary front-wheel driven vehicle, the Haldex LSC can transfer torque to the rear axle based on sensor input with full electronic control and can thus work seamlessly together with other systems such as traction and stability control. In the design of such an all-wheel drive system; it is critical to avoid issues with drive line vibrations as well as the accompanying noise generation. This is a complex issue and even though the goal is to avoid these problems, they may still occur to a certain degree. BorgWarner now wants to investigate whether changes in the friction disc quality may affect the occurrence of vibrations. The friction disc quality could e.g. be described in terms of variations in height, material composition, material porosity and Young's modulus with the variations distributed around the circumferential of the friction disc. This study is however limited to investigate if a difference in height could be the cause of drive line vibrations. The goal is to determine if there is a correlation between a shifting thickness around the circumferential of the friction disc and the occurrence of vibrations. With the help from RISE Sicomp and their 3D-scanner it was possible to determine the difference in height around the circumference of the disc. The discs was scanned and then analyzed with the help of GOM-software. When the height was measured around the disc they were exposed to a run-in, this with the use of an LSC test rig. This way it is possible to see how the friction characteristics changes while it is being used and to later see if the height difference has changed. All this to see the correlation between the difference in height around the disc and the friction characteristics. A micro tomography scanner at LTU was used to section through the disc. It uses x-ray and makes it possible to look at sections all through the disc to see if there is a difference in the strucure of certain areas. If one pillow is more porous then another one. Based solely on the tomography test it is hard explaining the difference in Young’s modulus, the result showed little to none difference between different areas of the disc. With the help from 3D-scanning it has been shown that there is in fact a height difference. That difference becomes smaller with time when used, this due to the wearing of the highest area being greater than that of a lower area. The run-in seems to always have a positive result on the disc. Friction measurements during run-in showed that also a disc with small differences in height could display unfavorable friction characteristics. This would imply that the height difference matters but is not the only contributing factor to vibrations. Even though the difference in thickness of the friction disc has shown to contribute to vibrations, there are still factors that remains unclear. If the height would have been the only factor the friction measurements would support this more than what the actual case is. The other factors need further examination.

This master’s thesis is deal with the design of the tractor’s front axle drive to enlarge its braking efficiency of the standing tractor fixed by the parking brake. In the first two chapters, the basic information related to the above stated issue is being summarized. Next, procedure of creating the design including the fundamental calculation proposal is being described. In the last chapter, the strain-stress analysis of the selected partial sections of the design is being presented. The final design is supported with the drawing documentation that is being part of this master’s thesis, too.