Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Toshihiro Ohtake

Masaki Inui

Mitsuhiro Umeyama

Kenichi Yamamoto

Tsuyoshi Sumi

A flywheel device with a torsional damper including a driving side flywheel and a driven side flywheel, a first spring mechanism directly connecting the driving and driven side flywheels, and a second spring mechanism connecting the driving and driven side flywheels via a friction mechanism. The second spring mechanism and the friction mechanism are arranged in series with each other and the series combination of the second mechanism and the friction mechanism is arranged in parallel to the first spring mechanism. The first spring mechanism includes at least one combination of two springs arranged in series with each other. The two springs have a different spring constant or a different maximum angular stroke. Thus, a spring constant of the first spring mechanism changes at a predetermined torsional angle whereby a torque capacity of the flywheel is greatly increased.

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Toyota, Japan

Toshihiro Ohtake