Powertrain Modal Analysis for Defining the Requirements for a Vehicle Drivability Study

Abstract

The powertrain of a car plays a major role in establishing the vehicle’s offered comfort due to vibrations because it is the heaviest single component installed on the chassis; therefore, when oscillating, it transmits considerable forces to the chassis, inducing unwanted vibrations. For this reason, it is important to identify some associated properties with the powertrain suspension system that describe the performance of its rigid body dynamics. In this way, we could place constraints and requirements on these quantities in order to exclude all the configurations that cause intolerable levels of vibrations, and include all the others in the analysis for further evaluation. The definition of these requirements is critical: a poor setting of requirements excludes potentially good powertrain suspension setups and includes those ones with a drivability index that is too poor. In this paper, we identify a set of quantities that show correlation with the vibration performance of the powertrain setup. A method for testing the specificity of the requirements is also shown in order to evaluate which requirements perform best when it comes to filtering engine suspension setups that provide an acceptable level of vibrations.

Enhancing the Performance and Durability of Commercial Vehicle Cargo Box Frames through Modal Analysis

“…Modal analysis is explored in various contexts within the collection of articles. It encompasses powertrain modal analysis for vehicle drivability studies [8] and modal analysis applied to a conceptual microsatellite design featuring perforated structural components for mass reduction [9]. The utilization of the digital image correlation technique is presented for modal analysis [10], along with an exploration of vibration fatigue analysis of carbon steel coil springs under different road excitations [11].…”