Transmission control for power-shift agricultural tractors: Design and end-of-line automatic tuning

This paper addresses the analysis and design of the transmission control system for a high-power power-shift agricultural tractor. Specifically, all the criticalities involved with the correct management of both single clutch and double clutch gear shifts are investigated, and a control system capable of providing good shifting performance in all operating conditions is proposed. Further, to comply with components tolerances and spreads in the production line, an automatic procedure for the end-of-line tuning of the transmission control system is proposed to objectively classify the quality of the gear shift and automatically optimize it. The suitability of the proposed approach is thoroughly tested on an instrumented vehicle.

Research highlights
► Transmission control design for power-shift agricultural tractors.
► Good shifting performance are guaranteed in all working conditions.
► An end-of-line automatic tuning procedure is design to deal with production spreads.