ZF Honors Employees with Invention Award
2015-05-21 Source：www.chinabuses.org
Summarize：With exactly 909 patents registered at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (GPTO), ZF broke a new world record in 2014. This made it that much more difficult for the jury to sort through this year's pile of applications for the ZF Graf-von-Soden Invention Award and select only six winners.
www.chinabuses.org: With exactly 909 patents registered at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office (GPTO), ZF broke a new world record in 2014. This made it that much more difficult for the jury to sort through this year's pile of applications for the ZF Graf-von-Soden Invention Award and select only six winners. ZF honored the outstanding employee inventions: Advanced hybrid concepts and continuously variable off-road machinery transmissions meet weight-reducing, steerable rear axles while easy fingertip gear selection per touchscreen meet systems that make the downsizing driveline even quieter.
Important elements of ZF corporate culture include valuing and promoting the power of innovation among the workforce. The annual Graf-von-Soden Invention Award has been a long-established benchmark in this effort. The award was presented for the third time in 2015, focusing on six new outstanding inventions from ZF employees – one from each division or strategic business unit and one from Corporate Research and Development. The jury had selected them from among all ZF patent registrations that were published the previous year and, which alone at the GPTO, hit a new record number of 909.
Alfred Graf von Soden-Fraunhofen, after whom the Invention Award was named, would probably have been very pleased by these numbers. After all, this nobleman was not only one of the first managing directors of the newly founded “Zahnradfabrik GmbH” in 1915, he was also one of the most important and forward-thinking technology visionaries of his time. Yet just as visionary are the patent registrations that were honored with this year's Invention Award. They reflect both the wealth of inventiveness among our employees as well as the broad technology expertise of ZF.
Four ZF experts from the Car Powertrain Technology division declared war on vibrations, which spread as background noises from the engine throughout the entire vehicle. Their new system to reduce torsional vibration has been particularly effective in counteracting the rising excitations that the future combustion engines will produce as a result of further downsizing and downspeeding measures. Unlike today's dual-mass flywheel, for example, the general idea behind the new system is based on power splitting. The torsional vibrations of the crankshaft are initially distributed on two different transmission paths. One rigid path conducts a part of the engine torque – including the vibration – unchanged. The other path is a phase-delayed path that conducts the remaining engine torque and simultaneously changes the phase position and amplitude of the vibration. A coupler guides the branched paths and thereby the phase-delayed alternating torques back together so that they completely offset one another at the same amplitude. This patent registration therefore effectively and efficiently prevents negative impacts on the driveline and the noise level comfort.
The invention of the control arm rear axle with optional active slip angle controller by a ZF engineer from the Car Chassis Technology division is groundbreaking in many regards. The compact multilink basic axle can be expanded into a versatile functional axle by means of add-on modules.
The general benefits of this new axle design include its versatile areas of application as well as its minimal installation space requirements. Functional extensions can be shown in conjunction with further ZF innovations: The rear axle, for example, can be steered by means of Active Kinematics Control (AKC) or electrically driven using an electric axle drive module.
Weight can be additionally reduced thanks to another integrated function. In this independent suspension, a wheel-guiding transverse spring made of fiber-reinforced plastics replaces a steering pair, the suspension spring, and the stabilization.
From ZF’s Research and Development division, a three-member engineering team was also honored with the Invention Award for their modular plug-in-hybrid concept based on a dual clutch transmission with winding path gear. The patent name is key here: Without having to make notable changes to the gearset, the engineers were able to combine all the benefits of a passenger car dual clutch with that of a highly efficient hybrid system.
The last invention is based on a flexible modular kit which always manages with only one electric motor. The battery can also be conveniently charged on an electrical outlet. This ZF solution exploits its numerous benefits especially in combination with coupled, i.e. interdependent, dual clutch sub-transmissions.
Also, to make trucks and buses more efficient and environmentally friendly, hybrid systems are evolving into a more and more tried-and-tested technology – and even more so, the more advanced the systems are. That's why two driveline experts from the ZF Commercial Vehicle Technology division have come up with a hybrid transmission whose electric motor is more compact and lightweight than previous designs. The electrical drive unit thereby generates up to 7 500 rpms on the transmission input shaft of the basic transmission. The innovative planetary step-up gear stage with an electric motor in an add-on module on the transmission input has made this possible.
Efficiency is playing an increasingly important role in off-road machinery – both in terms of operation and also costs. With a new hydrostatic-mechanic power-split, single-range, continuously variable transmission with secondary coupling, ZF is meeting this requirement to a particularly high degree. Conceived of by an engineer from the ZF Industrial Technology division, two hydrostatic units – that is, a small pump and a large engine in a double yoke – represent the most outstanding features of the transmission system designed especially for low performance classes. Furthermore, it is designed for only one area, which means that it makes do with fewer components: The invention has one simple planetary drive and only two small drive-side powershift elements. The ZF continuously variable transmission thus achieves a high transmission ratio spread as well as outstanding efficiency.
One ZF inventor from the Electronic Systems business unit came up with a smart alternative to conventional transmission selector levers: In the shift-by-wire via touch display solution, car drivers can simply set the automatic gear selection P, R, N, D to be displayed on the screen. Each individual speed has its own symbol in the touch-sensitive selection field. However, the gear does not engage until the driver drags it with his or her finger via drag & drop into the neighboring confirmation and display field. This will help the application offer substantial added safety compared to similar and previous approaches. In addition, a hand support can be used in the ZF system that also haptically reports that the gear selection change has taken place as requested.
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