R&D and test equipment
MAZARO’s chief development engineer built up more than 25 years of experience in transmission design in off- and on-highway vehicles for prominent multinational OEMs. The design of MAZARO’s technology started from a blank page and avoids the issues of existing transmission systems, is based on current general market needs and customers’ specific requirements. The basic technical principles and subsequent developments are protected by four worldwide PCT patents. MAZARO’s engineers have a solid university engineering degree.
MAZARO calculates all the mechanical and hydraulic aspects of its transmissions and has developed the full physical model to support new designs. All components are designed and calculated by Finite Element Analysis to guarantee that the life requirements of the applications are met.
FMEA study and functional safety analysis
Each design has to pass an FMEA study and a functional safety analysis. The model based controller offers all necessary safety functions besides fully automated driving where the controller ensures that the engine or E-motor in combination with the transmission are always running on the best efficiency curve of the whole driveline.
Our development and research activities have been rewarded several times with financial support from the Belgian government and the European Commission.
Test benches
MAZARO has set up several test benches for research, component development, transmission development & validation and for durability tests in cooperation with the University of Ghent Campus Kortrijk, who gave valuable support to the set-up of the test benches.
Traction test rig
Many traction wheel materials and fluids have been evaluated to make a judicious selection. The traction models were validated on a traction test rig. Durability of the traction wheels has been confirmed in real conditions with a wide safety margin.
Photo: Traction test rig for development and durability testing
Subsystem development test set-ups
For the development of the hydraulic controls of the transmission a special set-up was made to fine-tune the theoretical hydraulic model.
Photo: Subsystem development test set-up
Components, such as sensors have been selected carefully by measuring their specific characteristics in real life environment.
Photo: Test set-up for evaluation of position sensors
Transmission performance test rig with 200 kW motors
The control software is developed and tested by MAZARO on the whole transmission under load. The theoretical models such as the efficiency maps are validated by measuring the transmission efficiency by torque and speed sensors on input and output shafts.
Photo: RVT on performance test rig: torque and speed sensors on transmission input & output shafts measure the efficiency
Photo: SVT on performance test rig: torque and speed sensors on input and output shafts measure the efficiency
Proven durability
Durability is secured by extensive theoretical calculations of the bearings. These were checked and confirmed by leading bearing manufacturers and external experts.
Durability calculations of the traction wheels was based on high level scientific theory in cooperation with international tribological centers. Feed-back from the durability tests confirmed and adjusted the models so that MAZARO owns the tools to design for a given life requirement.
Durability of the traction wheels has been proven by testing the equivalent of twice the duty cycle of a 30 ton articulated city bus, corresponding to 1.4 million kms (870 000 miles) of a 300 kW bus.
150 million revolutions were made:
- 70% of the time at full load
- 30% of the time at 125% of full load
Test result:
- No wear occurred. Microscopic analysis showed that the original grinding traces on the running surfaces were still intact after the test, proving that the traction wheels always ran on an oil film and didn’t suffer no wear at all
- No oil change was made nor necessary: the oil didn’t heat up, a logical consequence of the system’s high efficiency
