Study on the effects of a progressive disc in a motorcycle dry slipper clutch: FEM analysis and acceleration model.

Dry clutches have been widely used in motorcycle racing applications due to their low mass and higher transmission efficiency if compared to the wet solution. The object of the thesis, carried out in collaboration with STM Italy srl, is the study of a progressive disc designed to improve the engagement phase of a Moto3 dry clutch. The aim is to define a suitable finite elements model to simulate the experimental testing procedure of the disc. The second goal is to create a model to evaluate the engagement phase with this solution. At first, the slipper clutch assembly is presented and its advantages under braking are highlighted; then, dry and wet clutches are compared. The first chapter then concludes with a description of the progressive disc and how it interacts with the clutch and the motorcycle. In the second chapter, the procedure and the results of the experimental tests are presented; then a FEM model is developed using Solidworks and ANSYS and compared to the curves obtained experimentally. The last paragraph deals with the analysis of how different clutch configurations may affect its behaviour both under acceleration and braking. In the third chapter, the model of the acceleration of the motorcycle is at first presented analytically and then implemented in the MATLAB and Simulink environment. In the last two paragraph, the results are discussed and compared to real world data.