In a car with a Manual Transmission, Gear Knob is the main touch point for the driver to interact with vehicle control system. Therefore, Gear Shift Quality of vehicle is very important from customer point of view. With growing competition, even in a cost sensitive market like India, importance of the gearshift quality of manual transmissions has increased significantly over the past few years.
In Manual Transmission, shift tower is a system to assist the driver during selecting and shifting of gears. Diagonal Shift Assist (DSA) is a part of shift tower, which guides the gear shift from 5th gear to 4th gear and act as a safety device to prevent 5th to reverse gear engagement. The dynamic interaction of DSA system in shift tower is difficult to interpret by traditional test methods and virtually impossible at concept stage. To overcome these difficulties a dynamic model of the entire Shift Tower mechanism i.e. shift select lever, 3D ramp, detent pin, spring, interlock mechanism and DSA has been created. The model predicts the effectiveness of DSA system in smooth shifting of 5th to 4th and prevention of 5th to reverse gear shift. The model can then be used for parameter studies to investigate potential improvements in DSA system.
This paper will present experience of simulation of DSA system in shift tower using a dynamic model in ADAMS software, the structure of the model, methodology used and correlation with testing results