Direct Electromechanical Actuation of the Shift Drum in Non-Synchronized Motorcycle Transmissions: From Actuator Sizing and Electronics Design to Closed-Loop Position Control

Abstract

This thesis presents the direct electromechanical actuation of the shift drum in a non-synchronized motorcycle transmission. A DC motor drives the shift drum through a self-locking worm gear, so the entire foot shift mechanism is eliminated. As a reference, 84 manual gear changes of a large-displacement series-production motorcycle were measured on a chassis dynamometer; the mean shift time is 80 ms for upshifts and 92 ms for downshifts. The system design covers the complete chain from the mechanics to the software. The actuator motor is sized from inertia, friction and gear ratio. A dedicated shift controller is developed with supply filtering, signal conditioning for the position sensor and the incremental encoder, an H-bridge motor driver and a custom circuit board based on a SAMD21 microcontroller. The embedded firmware implements position control of the shift drum with a proportional controller, without inner speed or current loops. On a gearbox test rig, a gear change is completed in less than 80 ms without overshoot in a single measurement, below the mean of the manual reference shifts. The analysis reveals a trade-off in the choice of the worm gear ratio: at a ratio of 30, about 93% of the motor torque is needed to accelerate the motor shaft and the worm. A ratio of about 8 halves the required torque, but the worm gear then loses its self-locking. The measured shift times are published as an open dataset.