Mechanical Engineering Group Journals

Continuously Variable Transmissions (CVTs) have been around for many years and the cost-benefit issues relating to CVTs are well understood. The potential advantages are improved performance, economy and emissions or more importantly an improved compromise between them. Their disadvantages have been cost, complexity, noise and driving refinement. Only over the past five years or so has the development of CVTs reached a stage at which they are beginning to be genuinely competitive with the alternatives, e.g. conventional, torque converter automatics and automated manual gearboxes, such as the twin clutch VW DSG system. An important type of CVT is the E-CVT (Electronically-Controlled Continuously Variable Transmission), a good example of which is Toyota Hybrid System (THS). It combines the characteristics of an electric drive and a continuously variable transmission, using motor generator units in addition to toothed gears [9,10] (Single epicyclic gearbox transmission). In a THS system, one of the motor generators (MG2) is mounted on the driveshaft, and thus couples torque into or out of the driveshaft. The second motor generator (MG1) is connected with the sun gear and used to change the sun gear speed. Because MG2 is connected with the driveshaft, it cannot change speed and torque freely. Hence there are three power input/output branches in the system: the engine, MG1, the output, MG2. Because the speed of the output shaft is decided by the speed of the vehicle, there is some limitation on the control strategy to achieve optimum performance. On the other hand, in a twin epicyclic gearbox transmission system, which is presented in this paper, neither of the motor generator units is mounted on the driveshaft or on the engine input shaft, which gives more freedom and benefits to the system (Figure 1). One motor/generator is connected to the sun gear, and the other motor/generator is connected with a ring gear. So there are four branches of power input/output: the engine, the output shaft, and two motor generator units, MG1 and MG2.[Elmarakbi A, Ren Q, Trimble R, Elkady M (2013) Performance Analysis of Hybrid and Full Electrical Vehicles Equipped with Continuously Variable Transmissions. Adv Automob Eng 2: 103]

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Last date updated on September, 2024