Dual Clutch Transmission Vibrations during Gear Shift: A Simulation-Based Approach for Clunking Noise Assessment

A novel methodology, for the assessment of Dual Clutch Transmission vibrations during gear shifts, is proposed in this paper. It is based on the capability to predict through numerical simulation a typical dynamic quantity used to objectively evaluate the vibrational behavior of a gearbox during experimental tests, i.e. the acceleration of a point on the external surface of the gearbox housing. To achieve this result, a two-step approach is proposed: an accurate simulation of the internal transmission dynamics and an offline uncoupled computation of the gearbox housing acceleration from the output of the simulation. The first step required the definition of a suitable nonlinear lumped parameter model of the car equipped with a DCT that was implemented in Amesim software. The second step, developed as a post processing tool in Matlab, is based on the knowledge of the inertance Frequency Response Functions (FRFs) between a single component of force applied in a bearing and a single component of acceleration in the measurement point. The indices used to assess the clunk severity are peak to peak amplitude and RMS of the gearbox housing acceleration. The effectiveness of this method is proven by comparing experimental and simulated trends of the clunk indices.