Energy harvesting from vibration of a hydraulic engine mount using a turbine

Abstract

This work presents the design and analysis of a novel technique to capture the dissipated vibration energy of a hydraulic engine mount (HEM) using a hydraulic turbine. Hydraulic engine mount systems are designed to isolate engine and chassis vibrations in vehicles. Energy dissipation in hydraulic mounts happens because of the fluid resistance in two passages known as decoupler and inertia track. This type of engine mount is known for its economic noise, vibration, and harshness (NVH) suppression performance among various categories of engine mounts (passive, active and semi-active). A low cost technique with minimum design modifications to currently available hydraulic mounts can recycle; instead of dissipation, the excessive vibration energy of the engine compartment. In the first stage of this work, a novel design is introduced which replaces the decoupler with a hydraulic turbine to harvest and restore the vibration energy. The turbine design and selection has been done according to the fluid characteristics inside a typical engine mount. In particular, the resonant frequency was on the main interests since it corresponds to the highest fluid flow in hydraulic mounts. The mount vibration isolation performance and energy generation efficiency is studied in both frequency and time domains and the simulation results demonstrate that a considerable amount of energy can be harvested. Additionally, the effect of inertia track elimination on the turbine output power and mount vibration isolation performance is also investigated. The second stage of the work describes the potential of the embedded turbine to be used in a control structure to adjust the vibration isolation and damping properties of the HEM. In this configuration, the turbine is utilized as the system actuator to insert some flow energy and adjust the resonance frequency and amplitude of the mount's dynamic response. Simulation results are used to verify both the energy harvesting and vibration response performance of the proposed system.