Development and Experimental Study of an MRF Engine Mount with Controllable Stiffness

Abstract

Engine mount is an essential component to support the vehicle engine and to determine the vehicle dynamic property in terms of noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH). It works as the important interface between the engine and the chassis to reduce the bad impact of the engine-induced vibrations on the car body. To this end, this paper proposed a new semi-active engine mount capable of variable stiffness as an attempt to further improve the vibration reduction capability of the current semi-active engine mount which is only capable of varying damping. This study completed the characterization test of the proposed semi-active engine mount and evaluated its capability of stiffness variability. Then a test of an engine mounted with the new mount was performed to evaluate the vibration reduction capability. The experimental results demonstrate that this proposed engine mount show variable stiffness in response to the varied magnetic field, and that it performed well in protecting the chassis from the engine-induced vibration by reducing the vibration transmissibility.