A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH TO OPTIMAL DIMENSIONING OF AUTOMOTIVE TRANSMISSION SHAFTS

The paper deals with a functional approach to optimal dimensioning of automotive transmission shafts. In particular, the paper summarizes the results of a research activity developed on automotive transmission shafts to reduce the unpleasant movement of the transmission lever known as “shift lever movement”. The design problem was faced by focusing the axial clearances of the wheels assembled on the transmission shaft. First, the functional approach to optimal dimensioning proceeds from the study of different working conditions of the automotive manual transmission and focuses on corresponding geometrical constraints and design parameters. Then, it uses simplified schemes, each of them related to a different working condition, to set a series of functional dimensioning loops for the transmission shaft. Subsequently, the approach introduces an appropriate index to evaluate the Information Content for each dimensioning scheme and it addresses the optimal dimensioning scheme, related to the minimization of the Information Content. After this, the approach foresees worst-case to check the axial clearances of the wheels assembled on the shaft. In a such way the effect of the dimensioning are directly evaluated in terms of performances of the transmission. In fact, the reduction of axial clearances for the wheels assembled on the shaft causes a direct reduction of the “shift lever movement”. The functional approach to optimal dimensioning is applied to an automotive transmission set and the proposed dimensioning schema of the shaft is compared with different dimensioning schemes including one currently used in an international automotive company. A final discussion of the results, in terms of reduction of axial clearances of the parts assembled on the shaft, is provided.