Simulation of a micro shift valve with impact actuation

Abstract

A new concept of an impact actuated micro shift valve is presented. The impacts are transmitted to the interior of the valve through the casing. In order to predict the energy transmitted into the valve, the most important effects are discussed and two elastic multibody models using the Hertzian contact law are introduced and compared to a full finite element simulation. A simpler model with one degree of freedom for an elastic plate as transmission element proves to be too crude. But a more sophisticated model with axisymmetric finite elements for the plate shows good agreement. The simulations are compared to experiments performed with a scaled model for two different cases. The experiments show that so far neglected effects like plastic deformation occur and must be considered in the simulation if accurate predictions are required.