Development of a New Design Hydraulic Engine Mount

Abstract

In this paper a new design of the passive hydraulic engine mount is introduced. A means for improved decoupler control is introduced that does not noticeably affect the mechanisms steady state behavior, but improves start up and transient response. In addition, the decoupler mechanism is incorporated into a smaller, lighter, yet more tunable and hence more effective hydraulic mount design. The performance of the new hydraulic mount is discussed by means of a full nonlinear model. The increased design flexibility afforded by the redesigned support structure provides means by which to tune the engine mount to various engine support configurations. In addition, the proposed mount does not rely as heavily on hysteretic damping provided through elastomeric materials, which can be difficult to control, but more so on fluid behavior inside the engine mount; therefore, the damping of the system is much more tunable than previous hydraulic engine mount designs.