What is Driveline Testing?
Power Test has extensive experience in the design, manufacture and installation of many driveline test solutions. Driveline testing is a system that includes a prime mover and one or multiple loading units. Typically, for the best controllability and test versatility, both the prime mover and load units use specialized electric motors. They are connected to a power electronics control package that is designed to recirculate absorbed power back to the prime mover. In some cases to duplicate the field applications, the prime mover needs to be an IC engine or hydraulic motor. In these cases the absorbers can still be regenerative electric motors. However, they can also use alternate absorbing technology such as water brakes, shear brakes or eddy current absorbers.
Every driveline testing sequence tends to have different requirements. Power Test’s CES engineers review exact data required and design the test stand to provide accurate, repeatable control and data acquisition. Simulation of real world conditions are obtained with Power Test’s control system which can operate the driveline test stand manually or automatically. Test applications for driveline systems that Power Test has supplied include test stands for the following driveline components:
Flexible Coupling Tests
Prime mover drives a shaft that has several UUTs (couplings) connected at varying angles with an absorber loading the shaft for durability testing of flex couplings. The 24/7 operation allows test until failure of a UUT while collecting temperature, torque and flex angle of the UUTs. Upon failure of a specific coupling the system automatically shuts down. Regardless of the shut down, it still records all data and notifies the operator to replace the failed UUT. The resulting data allows the customer to record material durability, maximum installation alignment data, operating temperature rise, peak operating torques and failure modes for factory technical literature of new coupling technologies.
Gear-Unit Test Rigs
Power Test has installed numerous test stands for various types of powertrain systems including Axles/Gearboxes/Transmissions/Transfer Cases & Differentials.
Test rig for powertrain systems significantly varies in complexity from application to application. Simple applications may include input prime mover for no-load testing of gearboxes to assure assembly is to specification. Your testing capabilities are also increased by an output load unit for light or full load testing of a single-ratio or multi-gear power transmissions.
For more complex systems, Power Test has manufactured NVH (noise/vibration/harshness) test systems that rely on complete isolation of the UUT to collect high-speed broad spectrum frequency vibration data for FFT analysis to determine gear mesh, tooth surface finish and bearing loads. This differential test system (pictured below) included 4-Quad input and output electric dynamometers. This allows for full road-load simulation of the vehicle while collecting this data. The dynamometers are completely mechanically separate from the UUT to assure clean test data.
Power Test’s control systems allow integration of up to Eight Input/Output rotational systems. In addition, operators can control cooling or hydraulic flow systems, placing any driveline testing scenario within the CES team’s capabilities.