Computer simulator for continuously variable transmissions

摘要

Improvements are made to a multi-body simulation (MBS) for computing belt dynamics in metal pushing V-Belts for CVTs. All of the improvements combine to more accurately model the forces in the CVT mechanism, and also provide insight into the mechanism performance. One improvement more accurately captures effects of ring bending, using ring and block gap geometry to calculate bending forces and torques. A second improvement is implementation of a thrust controller to adjust pulley thrust to control CVT input/output speed ratio. Pulley thrust is adjusted by means of a feedback loop until a desired speed ratio is obtained. Finally, pulley conical (tilt) deflection is modeled using a stiffness representation that is a function of the block radius on the pulley face.