A P P L I C A T I O N

B R I E F S EX181

F R O M

F L U E N T

Automotive Clutch
In this example, FLUENT 5 is used to simulate the flow inside a clutch housing. The clutch has complex geometry and rotates at a high speed in the stationary housing. A steady-state treatment for the flow simulation, involving multiple reference frames, is used. The results can be used as an indicator of how well the air flow can cool the frictional heating that is generated by the clutch during operation.

Understanding the flow pattern inside a clutch is necessary for designers who are trying to optimize the cooling of the parts, which are subjected to frictional heating. In this example, FLUENT is used to predict the amount of air passing through the holes of the clutch cover during operation. This air flow is the primary source of cooling. The clutch rotates at a high speed inside a stationary gearbox bell housing. To simulate this motion, the multiple reference frames (MRF) model is used to obtain a steady state solution of the flow field. The MRF model has been heavily used with widespread success for modeling rotating parts in a variety of equipment. The flow in the region surrounding the rotating components is modeled in a rotating frame, in which these components are at rest, while the flow adjacent to the stationary components is modeled in the lab frame. An interior surface separates the two frames, and information is continually passed across this surface as the solution proceeds. The model is more economical than the timeCopyright 2002 Fluent Inc.

dependent sliding mesh model, in which the flow is tracked by a continually rotating grid. For the case of the clutch, the rotation speed is high and only the timeaveraged flow is of interest, so the MRF model is the most suitable choice for the simulation. The rotating assembly of the clutch was imported from ProE into GAMBIT and inserted into the bell housing, which was created in GAMBIT. A hybrid volume mesh was built that contained 700,000 tetrahedral and prism cells, split between the rotating and stationary regions. The rotating reference frame was given a rotation speed of 2000 rpm, to match that of the clutch. A flat plane parallel to the flywheel, positioned between the clutch cover and the top of the bell housing, was used as the interior surface between the frames. Above this surface, the walls of the housing are at rest. Below the surface, the housing walls are also at rest, and this is accomplished by assigning the walls a rotational speed of 0 in the absolute frame. Turbulence was treated with the RNG k- model with the Swirl Dominated
EX181 Page 1 of 2

Figure 1: The geometry of the rotating assembly, including the pressure plate (blue), the diaphragm spring (magenta), and the cover (green and red)

Figure 2: Local detail of the surface mesh

Figure 3: Contours of static pressure on the rotating assembly

Flow option, and standard wall functions were used for the near wall treatment. Only isothermal flow was considered, since the purpose of the simulation was to focus on the airflow inside the cover. Figure 1 shows the clutch assembly, including the pressure plate (blue), the diaphragm spring (magenta), and the cover (green and red). This entire assembly rotates inside the bell housing. A close-up view of the surface mesh on the clutch cover is shown in Figure 2. The six holes on the top of the clutch cover were meshed with prism shaped elements, as can be seen from the triangular

faces on top of the cover and quadrilateral faces on the sides of these openings. Figure 3 shows contours of static pressure on the rotating clutch assembly. The pressure is fairly uniform on the clutch cover, but variations are in evidence on the edges of the flow passages, suggesting that the flow does indeed penetrate into the openings, as desired. This finding is further supported by path lines colored by velocity magnitude, shown in Figures 4 and 5. In these figures, strong flow is in evidence both inside the clutch components (Figure 4) and inside the bell housing (Figure 5).

In summary, this example demonstrates that FLUENT can successfully compute the flow inside a clutch using the MRF model. More geometry details could be added to future models in order to improve the accuracy of the predictions. In addition, a thermal calculation could provide useful information on maximum temperatures reached in the clutch to check whether they are acceptable or not. Using this information, the CFD results could help engineers design and dimension components in order to optimize the cooling.
Courtesy of Automotive Products UK Ltd.

Figure 4: Path lines illustrate the flow in the vicinity of the cover

Figure 5: Path lines illustrate the flow inside the bell housing

Copyright 2002 Fluent Inc.

EX181 Page 2 of 2