Development of Shift Feeling Simulator for a Manual Transmission

Shift feeling simulator for a manual transmission is developed to evaluate the shift force that is transmitted to the driver's hand. In order to develop the simulator, dynamic models of the external linkage, internal linkage, synchronizer and drivetrain are obtained. The synchronizing motion is modeled as eleven steps depending on the relative displacement of the sleeve to the ring spring, outer ring chamfer, and gear chamfer. The contact mechanism between the chamfer to chamfer is modeled as a linear spring. In addition, an impact model is introduced to describe the transient motion of the chamfer when the sleeve impacts the engagement gear. Based on the dynamic model of each element, a shift feeling simulator is developed. The simulator calculates the sleeve displacement, cone torque, poppet ball torque, sleeve force, shift force and the speed of the input and output shaft. It is found that the shift force by the simulator shows a good correlation with the test results and it is expected that the shift feeling simulator developed in this study can be used as a useful design tool to evaluate the shift feeling in the initial design stage.