Electro-Mechanical Friction Clutch (EMFC) Controller Development for Automotive Application

Vehicle with advanced control technology in its power-train system offer many advantages in terms of performance, fuel consumption and improvement of driving comfort. This paper aims to provide a contribution in this direction by proposing a PD controller for an electronically controlled dry friction clutch engagement system. The engagement process for a novel Electro-Mechanical Friction Clutch (EMFC) is being studied and evaluated semi-empirically which exploits static and dynamic models for the system. This EMFC will be integrated with a novel Electro-Mechanical Dual Acting Pulley (EMDAP) continuously variable transmission (CVT) for the next generation of an automotive transmission in the future. Simplified static and dynamic models of the EMFC system consisting of mechanical actuator, dry friction clutch, a DC motor system and clutch linkages were developed. The DC motor system is used as an actuator to actuate power screw mechanism for engaging and disengaging the clutch. Matlab/Simulink (R) is used to simulate the model engagement process based on the experimental values of open-loop clutch engagement process. Computer simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme for the closed loop system.