SIMULATION STUDY OF DESIGN VARIATIONS FOR AN ENGINE MOUNT OF A PASSENGER VEHICLE

Abstract: The purpose of this project is to gain a deep understanding of the concept of engine mounts, their working properties, design considerations and the factors that affect its performance. The initial step of this project was to learn and understand the functions and components of an engine mount, it's desirable characteristics, types of engine mounts, it's design considerations, commonly used materials, and causes of damage and failure. A rubber engine mount of a typical standard drive vehicle is selected for this study, the reason being that the simulation study is purposed to be simple. The selected engine mount is modeled in Solidworks, and the model is analyzed in ANSYS for static stress, and Modal analyses, which provides the physical, and vibrational properties of the engine mount model like stress distribution, strain rate and Deformation, and Natural frequencies. The obtained results (particularly deformation and region(s) of failure) are then compared to its real-life counterparts and the level of the simulations' accuracy is determined. The engine mount model is then taken up for design changes, where the primary motives are to reduce strain rate and deformation, tuning it's natural frequency, and improve it's fatigue life, stiffness, and damping. The variations in design are based on the ideas to have good vibration damping and dissipation. The models of the design variants are subjected to the same simulation processes that the standard model. The resulting successful model is determined based on the model that has better endurance and damping characteristics.

Keywords: Engine mount, Vibration, design, analysis