Thermal Analysis of Poly-V Belt Transmission System

Nowadays, automotive companies are seeking to use prospective robust, light-weight, anti-corrosive and cost-effective composites such as fibre reinforced polymer (FRP), instead of traditional materials like steel or aluminum alloy, to make their products more competitive in the market. The sponsor company in this project, Litens Automotive Group, is investigating the feasibility of adopting FRP to manufacture high torque capacity drive pulleys. However, comparing with a metal alloy, FRP exhibits a reduced material strength at the near engine high operating temperature, making the design of this pulley very challengeable. Moreover, time-consuming tests on expensive FRP drive pulley prototypes delay the design cycle and increase the research cost. Therefore, an analytical thermal analysis algorithm developed in this project for the design of FRP drive pulleys enables the product designers rapidly to determine thermal distributions of the FRP drive pulley and help them to optimize the pulley design.

Faculty Supervisor:

Kamran Behdinan

Student:

Xingchen Liu

Partner:

Litens Automotive

Discipline:

Engineering - mechanical

Sector:

Automotive and transportation

University:

Program: