82 Automotive Innovation

force pushing it due to the pressure of the incoming fluid as well as the benefit of ejecting
the exiting fluid against the fixed stator.
As turbine speed increases, the relative difference in speed of the pump and turbine
decreases, and so the torque multiplication decreases. In this sense, it works a bit like
gearing: the less the speed decreases, the less the torque increases. At higher speed, when
the turbine is turning nearly as fast as the pump, the fluid leaves the turbine with much
less velocity, and the relatively geometry of the turbine and stator change. Effectively, the
turbine is now rotating so quickly that the fluid’s relative transaxial motion changes and
the fluid leaving the turbine begins to hit the backside of the stator. So, the stator no longer
reverses the flow, it now freewheels with the impeller. At this point, called the coupling
point, there is no longer torque multiplication, and the torque converter operates as a basic
fluid coupling. The ability of the stator to freewheel avoids the drop in torque that would
result from the changed geometry at high speeds if the stator were fixed, and it allows a
continued rise in efficiency to perhaps 92% or so.
Fundamentally, the capacity for torque multiplication is possible because the pump
is rotating faster than the turbine. The greater the difference in the rotation speeds, the
greater the torque. This has the happy effect of providing the greatest torque multiplica-
tion, typically about 2:1, when the car just begins to move. As the speed picks up, the rela-
tive speed difference of the impeller and turbine decrease and the multiplying effect drops
off. The difference between the two speeds is called slip. Fortunately, at higher speed
when no torque multiplication is needed, the slip is reduced. But there is always some slip;
otherwise no torque could be transmitted through flow. At lower speeds, as slip increases,
the efficiency of a torque converter drops notably.
Some of this inefficiency can be addressed by adding a clutch mechanism that can lock
the assembly together at cruise speed called a lock-up clutch. This is particularly advanta-
geous in overdrive, since the negative relative slip could cause fluid cavitation and over-
heating. While this technology has been around for a while, and is nearly universal in cars
manufactured in the last two decades, more precise digital control now allows for earlier
and more frequent engagement of the lock-up mechanism by identifying conditions for
lock-up engagement with low load and high speeds in every gear ratio but the first. The
result is improved fuel efficiency as well as reduced heat accumulation.

Automatic Transmissions
While we now know that a layshaft transmission can be made to operate automatically,
this was not always the case. So, when engineers set out to build an automatic transmis-
sion more than half a century ago, they began with an entirely different starting point.
As a result, the heart of the conventional automatic transmission is not a series of gears
lined up on dual shafts; it is an epicyclic or planetary gearset. The most basic example is
defined by four components: A center gear, called a sun gear, multiple pinion gears that
mesh with the sun gear and can rotate around it, called planet gears, an outer ring with
teeth on the inside, called a ring gear or annulus, and a carrier that connects the planet
gears together and allows them to rotate as a unit (Image 3.13). Each component can be
fixed in position or allowed to spin though the application of clutching mechanisms or
band brakes. Changes in the drive ratio are then simply a matter of changing the driving
and driven components and fixing or releasing others to define various combinations of