Accelerated Wear Bench Test Development for Sintered Shift Fork of Manual-Shifted Transmission

The aim of this paper is to describe an accelerated bench test designed to a fast and efficient evaluation of the pad wear of manual transmission gear shifting forks.

The new bench test simulates the operational conditions of the shifting forks inside the manual transmission. It reproduces the assembly conditions and dimensional settings that influence the tribological behavior.

Based on vehicle test results, the bench test was designed to work with automation system and control software that allows to defining a load application cycle, rotation and a controlled oil temperature.

The paper compares bench test results against the ones obtained on vehicle tests. After some interactions, the bench test was able to simulate in 2 hours the wear usually found after 3 days of accelerated vehicle field tests.