Driveline Torsional Analysis and Clutch Damper Optimization for Reducing Gear Rattle

This paper describes a research work on driveline modeling, torsional vibration analysis, and clutch damper parameters optimization for reducing transmission gear rattle on the vehicle creeping condition. Firstly, major driveline components, including quasi-transient engine, multistage stiffness clutch damper, detailed manual transmission and differential mechanism, and LuGre tire, are modeled, respectively. Secondly, powertrain system modeling adopting a two-stage stiffness clutch damper is constructed and analyzed. Transient responses predicted by the model show that the driveline undergoes severe torsional vibration and transmission gear rattle phenomenon. By analysis, it is concluded that the clutch damper works jumping between the first- and second-stage stiffness, which results in this problem for the creeping condition. Then, a three-stage stiffness clutch damper is proposed innovatively to solve this problem. It is shown that severe driveline vibration and gear rattle phenomenon are inhibited effectively. Finally, it draws a conclusion that clutch damper parameters could have a great effect on driveline vibration and gear rattle phenomenon and a three-stage stiffness clutch damper could be utilized to solve gear rattle phenomenon efficiently on the vehicle creeping condition.