Failure Study for Tribological Characteristic Analysis of a Clutch System in Passenger Cars

This paper presents a case study on the tribological failure analysis of a clutch system for a manual transmission car. The clutch systems are composed of clutch disk, clutch pressure plate, flywheel rubbing surface, coil and diaphragm springs, release bearing and lever, clutch spline and shaft. The purpose of a clutch system is to transmit and disconnect the driving power of engines by frictional farce from a rubbing surface of a flywheel to a clutch disk and clutch pressure plate with a minimum power loss. In this study, many tribological failure cases based on the wear phenomena and thermal distortions have been presented, which are collected from the car repair shop and maintenance center. The triboiogicai failures are mostly come from the driving conditions, overloading of a car, and especially driving style and personal habit of a car driver.