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Engineering Failure Analysis: Sciencedirect
Engineering Failure Analysis: Sciencedirect
a
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, Mahindra Research Valley, Chennai, India
b
Department of Automobile Engineering, Madras Institute of Technology, Anna University, Chennai, India
Keywords: Synchronizers are the heart for the manual transmission, automated manual transmission and
Manual transmission dual clutch transmission. The synchronizers match the speed of the target gears during gear
Carbon synchronizers shifts. Downsizing the high-power density engine develops higher angular accelerations. Higher
Wear angular accelerations create torsional vibrations and are detrimental to the life of the synchro-
Torsional vibration
nizers. The synchronizer rings can move freely in the available space due to torsional vibration.
Lubrication
Angular acceleration
The synchronizers which experience higher angular acceleration collide with the surrounding
parts and wear out. The wear of synchronizer carbon liner reduces the wear gap to zero. The zero-
wear gap hampers the synchronizer functionality and leads to gear clash. This paper presents the
impact of angular acceleration on the life of carbon synchronizer ring and the parameters which
are influencing to overcome the failure are studied. A bench test set-up was developed to simulate
the vehicle level angular accelerations. The bench test results show direct correlation with the life
of the synchronizer on the vehicle. Torsional vibration dampening using clutch size, oil viscosity,
guiding of synchronizer ring, and oil volume are studied. The synchronizer carbon liner wear
reduction is studied and validated with different bench and vehicle level tests.
1. Introduction
Synchronizers are conical mechanical clutches used to synchronize the speed of the rotating parts. Synchronizers are used in
manual transmission, automated manual transmission, and dual clutch transmissions for passenger and commercial vehicles. The
most commonly used material for synchronizer is brass. To improve the friction of cone surface, wear resistance, and durability of
synchronizer, carbon synchronizers are widely used. Under severe test and operating conditions, the carbon synchronizer shows
higher wear resistance and durability when compared with brass synchronizers.
In vehicles, the internal combustion engines are the main source for the angular acceleration and torsional fluctuations due to the
engine firing order [1,2]. Stringent emission norms and the demand for fuel efficient engines force the automotive industries to
downsize the engines. Small sized high-power density internal combustion engines generate high torsional vibration [3]. The tor-
sional fluctuation generated by the engine is transmitted to the gearbox through clutch. Dual mass flywheel can filter the torsional
fluctuations produced by the engine [4]. However, generally not used in commercial vehicle engines, due to high cost when
Abbreviations: TV, Torsional vibration; GSD, Gear shift durability.; CFD, Computational fluid dynamics
⁎
Corresponding author at: Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd, Mahindra Research Valley, Chennai, India.
E-mail address: raja.barathi@mahindra.com (B. K).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.engfailanal.2019.06.084
Received 8 March 2019; Received in revised form 25 June 2019; Accepted 25 June 2019
Available online 26 June 2019
1350-6307/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
B. K, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 105 (2019) 427–443
compared with single mass flywheel. All the fixed gearwheels in the commercial vehicle coaxial manual transmission gearbox are
mounted on the countershaft. This leads to excitation of all the idler gears by the countershaft, both in neutral and with any gear step
engaged condition [1]. The torsional vibration creates the brass synchronizer ring lug failure and synchronizer ring wear gap re-
duction [5,7].
This paper reports on an experimental investigation of carbon synchronizer liner wear reduction in a conventional manual
gearbox under torsional vibration condition. First, the endurance capacity or amount of wear on the designed synchronizer are
studied with the μ-comp test rig, bench level GSD test rig and vehicle GSD test. Then the vehicle is instrumented to capture the driver
driving pattern such as gear usage pattern and the engine speed. The gearbox and the engine are instrumented to capture the torsional
vibrations on the engine flywheel and input shaft of the gearbox after the clutch. This measurement describes the input torsional
fluctuations to the gearbox. Then the gearbox is instrumented and tested on the TV test rig which replicates the actual vehicle carbon
synchronizer liner wear. On the TV test rig, the gearbox is tested on different clutch sizes, oil volume, oil viscosity and inner diameter
guiding of synchronizer ring. The improvements are validated on the vehicle to confirm meeting of 100,000 km target distance.
2. Statement of problem
The gearbox taken for the study is inline manual transmission having input shaft, counter shaft and output shaft. It has dual cone
carbon synchronizers in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th gear positions and single cone carbon synchronizer in 5th and 6th gear positions. All
the synchronizers are located on the output shaft as shown in Fig. 1. The synchronizer assembly consists of synchronizer hub,
synchronizer sleeve, synchronizer blocker ring, dog teeth and strut detent. The outer synchronizer ring and inner synchronizer ring
are made of steel and have cone surface. The carbon liner is bonded on the steel intermediate synchronizer ring. The outer, inter-
mediate and inner synchronizer ring parts are assembled loosely with in the available space of hub to gear assembly as shown in
Figs. 2 and 3. The synchronizer assembly is designed to have a nominal wear gap of 1.5 mm. The useful life target of the gearbox is
100,000 km. The synchronizer rings wear off quickly in the vehicle validation in less than 20,000 km especially in 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th
gear positions. Due to ring wear, the wear gap as shown in Fig. 3, is getting closed or become zero. Zero wear gap hampers syn-
chronization and the gearbox results into early gear crash on the non-engaged synchronizer rings.
3. Experimental set-up
The experimental test flow is given in Fig. 4. The synchronizer design is validated for the coefficient of friction generation and the
endurance life with the help of μ-comp synchronizer endurance test, Transmission level GSD test and Vehicle level GSD. These tests
do not include any external noise factors. Then the external factors which affects the synchronizer function are checked using
customer driving pattern analysis, TV test and Highway durability test.
The above experimental test flow can be broadly divided into two types: Bench level test and Vehicle level test according to
Table 1.
The bench tests are the replica of the vehicle test. The bench test gives the flexibility of controlling the test parameters and reduces
the total test duration. The external noise factors are not present in the bench test. However, the vehicle tests are carried out to
simulate the actual vehicle driving conditions.
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B. K, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 105 (2019) 427–443
Table 1
Bench tests and vehicle tests
Bench tests Vehicle tests
pneumatic actuators are connected to the gear shift knob for the gear select and gear shift directions. The input and the output shaft
rpm are measured using speed sensors. The gear shift forces and the travel are measured using strain gauges and position sensors. A
temperature sensor is used to monitor the transmission oil temperature. For dynamic gearshift, the speed of the input shaft during
gear shift is as per the Table 3.
The gears are shifted in the sequence according to Table 4.
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Table 2
Test specification for μ-comp test
Parameter Specification
Table 3
GSD test bench gear shift speeds
Shift type Input shaft speed (rpm)
Up-shift 1800
Down-shift 1200
Table 4
Gearbox GSD test cycle
Gear shift sequence No of cycles
1-2-1 50,000
2-3-2 100,000
3-4-3 100,000
4-5-4 100,000
5-6-5 100,000
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Table 5
Test configuration of TV test rig
Test No Hub to ring clearance (mm) Oil grade Oil volume (l)
1 3 SAE80 5
2 0.5 SAE80 5
3 0.5 SAE80W90 5
4 0.5 SAE80W90 7
The gearbox is mounted on a vehicle to test the gearbox in the actual driving conditions. The vehicle is loaded to the GVW to
simulate the actual load condition.
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Table 6
Test configuration of engine dyno
Test no Clutch size Hub to ring clearance (mm) Oil grade Oil volume (l)
engine speed as per the Table 7. The vehicle was driven for 15,000 shift cycles. This is an abuse test for the synchronizer components.
The synchronizer ring wear can occur due to poor design and or due to external factors. The synchronizer capacity is used to
validate the robustness in design. The external factors which causes wear are discussed under drivetrain vibrations.
The synchronizer capacity was validated to check the life of the synchronizer ring. This validates the capability of the rings to
Table 7
Vehicle GSD gear shift speeds
Shift type Input shaft speed (rpm)
Up-shift 1900
Down-shift 1900
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Table 8
Material limits of carbon synchronizer
Specification Material Limits
Fs Nc A
Surface Pressure =
sin (2)
rpm
Surface Velocity = dmax
60 (3)
= abs ( i a) (4)
This test was performed in a controlled environment with no vibration in the system. The test gives a stable friction and μ-
dynamic is 0.105 at the end stage. The total wear is 0.21 mm for the entire test cycle (Fig. 10). The wear distribution is 55:45 on the
inner and outer rings with no abnormalities in the entire test cycle.
When the vehicle is driven on top gear with max engine rpm, the idle synchronizer packs in the low gear experience a high surface
velocity. The 1st gear experiences 30% higher surface velocity than the carbon limits. In the next test, the hub speed is increased to
match the vehicle Δrpm on the test rig without performing the gear shift operation. This generates 30% higher surface velocity on the
synchronizer cone surfaces. The test was conducted for 5 h and no wear observed.
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1.8
1.6
1.4
higher inertia causes higher wear on the synchronizer rings when compared to other gear positions. During upshift the gearbox drag
helps for synchronization. In downshift the gearbox has to work against the drag for synchronization. The higher work done by the
synchronizer by accelerating the speed of the input shaft as well as overcoming the drag forces increases the wear on the 1st
synchronizer. The wear distribution is 58:42 on the inner and the outer synchronizer rings. The wear of all gear positions is shown in
Fig. 11. The gearbox meets the useful life target of 100,000 gear shift cycles in the GSD bench test in each gear. This will be equal to
100,000 km of the useful life of the vehicle.
1.8
1.6
1.4
Wear Gap (mm)
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Gear
Wear Gap Before Test Wear Gap A!er Test
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40
% Time Ulizaon
20
0
N 1 2 3 4 5 6
Gear
40
% Time Utilization
30
20
10
torsional fluctuations create surface fatigue on the hitting zone and in turn wears the synchronizer ring [7]. The ring moves linearly
and radially in the package space and hitting with the synchronizer cone with very high frequency. The hitting removes the oil film in
between the carbon synchronizer lining and the synchronizer cone surfaces. The hitting removes the carbon particles on the liner
surface.
The angular accelerations can be reduced by using bigger size flywheel and clutch [3]. To reduce the drivetrain vibration, the
clutch disc size was increased to 10%. To accommodate the increased clutch disc diameter, the flywheel diameter also was increased
to 10%. The increased flywheel reduced the engine angular acceleration. The 10% diameter increased clutch & flywheel dampened
the input shaft torsional vibrations to 1100 rad/s2 for the engine speed range of 1100 to 1400 rpm in 5th gear driving condition as
shown in Fig. 16.
The gearbox was validated with the standard diameter clutch disc and the 10% diameter increased clutch disc. Both the vehicles
were tested at a constant speed of 1100 to 1200 rpm for 10,000 km on the 5th gear. On the 3rd gear synchronizer, the wear got reduced
from 0.95 mm to 0.45 mm with the 10% diameter increased clutch when compared with the standard diameter clutch. The reduced
angular acceleration reduces the free movement of the rings and the wear was getting reduced in the bigger diameter clutch gearbox
(Fig. 17).
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4.2.2. TV test
The drivetrain vibrations are simulated using TV test rig. On the TV test set-up, the gearbox with 100 rad/s2 angular acceleration
generates 0.05 mm wear on the 3rd gear synchronizer position and no wear in the other gear position, when tested for 65 h. The same
gearbox when tested with 2000 rad/s2 angular acceleration for 35 h had a wear of 1.4 mm on the 3rd gear synchronizer position
which was in line with the 20,000Km highway durability vehicle gearbox. On, further testing, all the synchronizer rings wear out
fully at 65 h as shown in Fig. 18, Fig. 19.
Under the magnification of 500× on the microscope, the vehicle level GSD test synchronizer ring wear pattern shows carbon
particles with oil filled pores and it is due to pressure loading of synchronizer ring (Fig. 20a). When the vehicle is driven continuously
on the 5th gear on the highway, the vehicle failed synchronizer ring does not show any pressure loading. Due to vibration, the
synchronizer ring moves freely and hits on the synchronizer cone surface. The hitting on the gear cone causes abrasion wear and
removes the top layer of carbon and it gets replaced with the next layer of carbon particles. This reduces the life of the synchronizer
ring. The new synchronizer, the highway durability vehicle failed synchronizer, and the TV test rig synchronizer have the same
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0.8
Wear (mm)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 3 4 5 6
Gear
Standard Ø Clutch 10% Increased Ø Clutch
Fig. 20. a) GSD Test completed carbon surface–loaded carbon surface, b) Torsional vibration failed non-loaded carbon surface
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gearbox with 0.5 mm radial clearance had a wear of 0.98 mm compared with 1.4 mm wear of 3 mm radial clearance synchronizer ring
(Fig. 22). Due to center support the wear of the inner and the outer carbon liners became 60:40 ratio. The reduced clearances reduced
the radial movement of the synchronizer rings and reduced the intensity of the hitting of the synchronizer ring and in turn reduced
the wear in all gear synchronizer positions.
k1 = tan (9)
1.6
1.4
1.2
Wear (mm)
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 3 4
Gear
Clearance 3mm, SAE80, 5L Oil Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80, 5L Oil
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Table 9
Oil properties
Parameter SAE80 SAE 80W90
1.2
1
0.8
Wear (mm)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 3 4
Gear
Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80, 5L Oil Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80W90, 5L Oil
1
k 0 = rm + bsin
2 (10)
Axial volumetric flow rate due to the centrifugal force is as follows [12].
Q = 2 h ( k1 Z + k 0 0.5h) u (Z ) (11)
The axial volumetric flow increases linearly by increasing the space between the synchronizer ring to have fully wetted surface.
When the oil full film wetting surface of synchronizer ring width increases, the axial volumetric flow needed to maintain full film
wetted volume also increases as shown in Fig. 25. The full film wetted surface area generates higher drag than the oil-air mixture in
the annular space of synchronizer ring. To increase the full film wetted surface area the oil volume and or the oil level in the gearbox
is to be increased.
A CFD analysis of gearbox was performed on the 3rd and the 4th gear positions. The purpose was to increase the drag (reduce the
torsional vibration) and improve lubrication/oil flow in the synchronizer components. Churning loss is a speed dependent loss that
will produce higher gearbox drag at higher speeds as large quantity of oil has to be moved per time unit [11]. The oil resists
movement of parts, there by dampening vibrations and mechanical shocks.
The oil volume in the gearbox was 5 l. The volume of the oil was increased to 7 l to provide higher splash in to wear gap, better
lubrication and to dampen the vibrations. The 5 l CFD analysis showed less oil movement around the 3rd and the 4th synchronizer
rings. The 7 l CFD analysis revealed that more oil reached the friction lining material on the 4th gear side via the openings of clutch
body ring lugs. The opening of clutch body ring lugs in the 3rd gear side was covered by the larger 3rd gear, so less quantity of oil was
reaching the lining material as shown in Fig. 26, Fig. 27. The 4th counter shaft gear had larger diameter and had higher immersion
depth on the oil compared with the 3rd gear. It drew up more oil and created more splash and stirred the oil bath more [13]. In the TV
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B. K, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 105 (2019) 427–443
0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
Q (L/min)
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16
h (mm)
Fig. 25. Volume of Oil required for full wetting of gear cone surface for different gear cone to synchronizer ring gaps
Fig. 26. Oil flow distribution on the 3rd & the 4th gear positions for 5 l and 7 l of oil (section taken between synchronizer ring and CB ring).
test for 65 h, the 3rd synchronizer had a wear of 0.52 mm in 5 l gearbox and the wear reduced to 0.3 mm in 7 l gearbox. For the 4th
gear the wear was 0.5 mm in the 3rd gear and the wear reduced to 0.2 mm in the 7 l oil gearbox as shown in Fig. 28. This wear
reduction happened due to the higher oil level and higher oil churning. The increased level of oil volume increased the drag of
counter shaft gears and increased the drag torque on synchronizers [14]. This reduced the free movement of the synchronizer rings by
dampening the vibration transferring from the 5th gear to counter shaft gears and in turn reduced the impact in all gear synchronizer
positions.
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B. K, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 105 (2019) 427–443
Fig. 27. Oil flow distribution on the 3rd & the 4th gear positions
0.6
0.5
Wear (mm)
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
1 2 3 4
Gear
Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80W90, 5L Oil Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80W90, 7L Oil
the 10% increased clutch diameter, 0.5 mm inner synchronizer ring clearance, with 7 l of SAE80W90 oil as shown in Fig. 29. The
wear was reduced in all gear synchronizer positions.
5. Conclusion
This paper describes the synchronizer ring wear due to torsional vibration in manual transmission gearbox synchronizers. The
experimental study reduces the synchronizer wear. The conclusions from the study and the experimental results are as follows:
0.8
Wear (mm)
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
1 2 4 3 5 6
Gear
Std. Dia Clutch, Clearance 3mm, SAE80, 5 Ltr oil
10% increaesd Dia Clutch, Clearance 0.5mm, SAE80W90, 7 Ltr oil
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B. K, et al. Engineering Failure Analysis 105 (2019) 427–443
1. The torsional vibration causes non-uniform wear on the synchronizer ring. The inner ring wear is higher than the outer ring wear.
2. The transfer of torsional vibration into the gearbox is dampened by the bigger diameter clutch. The inner synchronizer ring guide
restricts the free movement of the ring. Further high viscosity oil dampens the vibration which cause impact of synchronizer ring
and wear.
3. More amount of oil is getting churned with the increased oil volume, which pushes more oil in to the synchronizer ring and
dampen the vibration. The increase in the drag on the counter shaft gears further cut the vibration transfer path.
Increase of clutch size increases the downshift reflected inertia. Oil volume and the oil viscosity increases the drag of the gearbox.
These will affect the gear shift quality, which can be solved by optimizing the synchronizer index percentage, tooth thickness and
tooth chamfer angles.
Nomenclature
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