Occupant comfort in the cabin compartment and easy operation of cabin controls plays an important role in attracting the customer to the product. It works as the first interface for interaction with customers. Hence it’s essential to eliminate any nuisance present in the system.
Out of all the cabin peripheral control, the clutch pedal mechanism contributes the most to overall product quality perception and customer appeal. The effect of high clutch pedal effort becomes even more dominant in case of heavy traffic, where there is a frequent need to shift gears. This creates an annoyance for the drivers decreasing their productivity. Hence, it is important to optimize the clutch pedal mechanism at the design stage to give a smooth and comfortable feel of the product to the driver at the most economical cost.
Clutch assistance spring plays an important role in deciding the pedal effort. As well as if not tuned properly, it may result in kickback while releasing the clutch pedal. Assistance spring stiffness, preload, location and orientation are some of the parameters which affect the pedal efforts with the clutch clamping force. The above four parameters need to trade-off in such a way that it not just reduces the clutch clamping force (which is not linear throughout the travel) but also does not produce a pedal kick while releasing.
This paper explains a simple procedure for evaluating the pedal effort using MSC Adams with a correlation of 95% with physical measurement. This effort was evaluated considering the variable clutch forces with respect to clutch pedal travel. Also using the same procedure, spring parameters and location were optimized to achieve the required clutch pedal performance through virtual simulation.