Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

[Link]/locate/mechmt

A literature review of automotive vehicle engine mounting

systems
Yunhe Yu a, Nagi G. Naganathan a, Rao V. Dukkipati b,*
a
Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing, Engineering Department, The University of Toledo, Toledo,OH 43606, USA
b
School of Engineering, Faireld University, Faireld, CT 06430, USA
Received 12 July 1999; accepted 6 December 1999

Abstract
The ideal engine mount system should isolate engine vibration caused by engine disturbance force in
engine speed range and prevent engine bounce from shock excitation. This implies that the dynamic
stiness and damping of the engine mount should be frequency- and amplitude-dependent. The develop-
ment of engine mounting systems has mostly concentrated on improvement of frequency- and amplitude-
dependent properties. The conventional elastomeric mounts do not meet all the requirements and can only
oer a trade-o between static deection and vibration isolation. Passive hydraulic mounts can provide a
better performance than elastomeric mounts especially in the low frequency range. Semi-active techniques
are usually used to further improve performance of hydraulic mounts by making them more tunable. The
active engine mounting system can be very sti at low frequency and be tuned to be very soft at the higher
frequency range to isolate the vibration. The active engine mounts have been considered as the next gen-
eration of engine mounts. The optimization of engine mounting systems is quite desirable. The current
work on the optimization of the engine mount systems shows some limitations. 2000 Elsevier Science
Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Automative vehicle; Engine mount system; Vibration isolation; Mount model; Elastometric mounts

1. Introduction

The vehicle engine mounting system, generally, consists of an engine (vibration source) and
several mounts connected to the vehicle structure. The modern engine mounting systems have
been successfully used to isolate the driver and passenger from both noise and vibration generated

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-203-254-4147; fax: +1-203-254-4013.
E-mail address: RDUKKIPATI@[Link] (R.V. Dukkipati).

0094-114X/01/$ - see front matter 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 0 9 4 - 1 1 4 X ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 2 3 - 9
124 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

by the engine. However, there is still a need to improve the performance of engine mounting
systems for the following two reasons: One reason is that the requirements of vibration and noise
level isolation for passenger cars. The second reason is that the modern car designs have a trend
for lighter car bodies and more power-intensive engines. Such a weight reduction and increased
power requirements often have adverse eects on vibratory behavior, greatly increasing the vi-
bration and noise level. These two aspects are often conicting. Substantial improvement in the
performance of engine mounting systems denitely plays an important role in resolving such
conicting requirements.
Dierent kinds of engine mounting systems, from elastomeric to hydraulic, and from passive to
active, have been developed to improve the mount performance. Work on optimum tuning of
engine mounting systems is also progressing. In the following section, the performance require-
ments of engine mounting systems, the dierent kinds of engine mounts and mounting optimum
tuning are reviewed and discussed.

2. Performance requirements of engine mounting system

The primary function of the engine mounting system is to support the weight of the engine (also
called power plant). The plan view location of the engine center of gravity should not only be
contained within the support base, but the engine weight should also be well distributed among
the load carrying mounts [1,2,4,11,12,18,19,2124,27,2931,33,34,37]. This will ensure that the
engine can be freely maintained in its specic design position. Besides supporting the engine
weight, the major function of engine mounts is to isolate the unbalanced engine disturbance force
from the vehicle structure. For an internal combustion engine, there exists two basic dynamic
disturbances: the ring pulse due to the explosion of the fuel in the cylinder; the inertia force and
torque caused by the rotating and reciprocating parts (piston, connecting rod and crank). The
ring pulses will cause a torque to act on the engine block about an axis parallel to the crank. The
directions of the inertia forces are both parallel to the piston axis and perpendicular to the crank
and piston axes. The inertia torque acts about an axis, which is parallel to the crankshaft. For the
multi-cylinder engine, the components of the engine-unbalanced disturbance depend on the
number and arrangement of the cylinders in the engine. For example, the four-cylinder engine has
a vertical inertia force, which acts on the engine block in addition to the oscillator torque about
the crankshaft, while the six- and eight-cylinder engines have no such inertia force and have only
the torque oscillation. These engine disturbances will excite the engine six degree of freedom
(DOF) vibration modes as shown in Fig. 1 [25]. For example, the torque caused by the ring pulse
will cause engine pitch vibration. The frequency of unbalance disturbances is correlated to engine
speed and depends on the number of cylinders in the engine, the stroke number and the engine
speed. For the four cylinders, four-stroke engine, the frequency of fundamental disturbances is at
the second order of the engine speed. The frequency range is 20200 Hz for an engine speed range
from 600 to 6000 rpm. For an eight-cylinder engine, the frequency of the disturbance torque is at
the fourth orders of the engine speed and the frequency range is 40400 Hz for the same engine
speeds. In general, at low engine speeds (near idle) the engine disturbance will result in an an-
noying shaking of the vehicle. At higher speeds, a booming sound is created inside the vehicle
compartment when the engine disturbance force coincides with an acoustic resonance of the
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 125

Fig. 1. Engine six DOF mode [25].

passenger compartment. To isolate the vibration caused by the engine-unbalanced disturbances,

low elastic stiness and low damping is needed as the forces transmitted to the structure are
proportional to the stiness and damping of the mounts [66]. This is shown in Fig. 2, which in-
dicates the eect of frequency and damping on the force transmissibility through the typical two-
element Voigt mount model. In order to obtain a low transmissibility, the natural frequency of the
mounting system in a certain direction should be below the engine disturbance frequency of the
engine idle speed to avoid excitation of mounting system resonance during normal driving con-
ditions. The frequency of engine disturbance of mounting system natural frequency ratio should

Fig. 2. Eect of frequency and damping on the force transmissibility.

126 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

Fig. 3. Dynamic stiness of ideal mount.

be maximized. This means that the engine mount stiness coecient should be as low as possible
to obtain a low transmissibility. Lighter damping is also desirable for a low transmissibility at
high frequency range.
If the elastic stiness of an engine mount is too low, then the transient response of the engine
mount system can be problematic for the shock excitation. Shock excitation can be caused by
sudden acceleration and deceleration, braking and riding on uneven roads. The engine resonance
mode in the low frequency range can be excited by such kinds of excitation. Stiness values that
are too low will lead to large static and quasi-static engine displacement and damage the engine
components. So from this point of view, high stiness and high damping are required to minimize
the engine motion and absorb engine shake and resonance.
From the above discussion, it can be easily inferred that the engine mount system should
support the engine at static state, prevent engine bounce from shock excitation and isolate engine
vibration caused by engine disturbances in the complete speed range. To isolate the engine vi-
bration in a relatively high frequency range, the engine mounts are required to be soft low
elastic stiness and low damping. To prevent engine bounce in the low frequency range, engine
mounts should be hard high elastic stiness and high damping. The dynamic stiness of an
ideal mount is shown in Fig. 3 [43,44,67], which shows that the dynamic stiness and damping of
an engine mount should be frequency-dependent. Since lower frequencies usually lead to larger
amplitude of displacement and higher frequencies lead to smaller amplitude of displacement, the
mounting system with an amplitude-dependent characteristic can also meet this requirement. The
development of engine mounting systems has mostly concentrated on improvement in such fre-
quency- and amplitude-dependent properties.
Mounts should function in a very harsh environment such as very low and high temperatures
combined with aggressive substances such as oil, gasoline and cleaning liquid. The cost, main-
tenance, reliability and life of mounts should also be considered during the design of mounts and
mounting systems [40,45,47,50,52,53,56,62,63].

3. Typical engine mounts

3.1. Elastomeric mounts

Elastomeric (or rubber) mounts have been used to isolate vehicle structure from engine
vibration since the 1930s [41]. Since then, much signicant advancement, were made to improve
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 127

the performance of the elastomeric mounts [9,14,44]. The discussion of detailed structural designs
of these advancements is found in the literature [10,56].
Elastomeric mounts can be designed for the necessary elastic stiness rate characteristics in all
directions for proper vibration isolation. They are compact, cost-eective and maintenance free.
Bonded elastomeric mounts are known to provide more consistent performance and longer life
[55,56,68,70,73,75,77]. The elastomeric mount can be represented by the familiar Voigt model
which consists of a spring and a viscous damper as shown in Fig. 4 [66]. The dynamic stiness of
an elastomeric mount will be greater at higher frequencies than its stiness at lower frequencies
due to damping as shown in Fig. 5. This characteristic makes it dicult to design a mount system
that satises the design requirements. A high stiness or high damping elastomeric mount can
yield a low shake level at low frequency, but its performance at high frequency will be poor. On
the other hand, low stiness and low damping yields low noise levels, but it induces a high shake
level at low frequency because of the shock excitation. The solution is to obtain a compromise
between engine isolation and engine bounce. The elastomeric mounts oer a trade-o between
static deection and vibration isolation.
Elastomeric mounts have been successfully used for vehicle engine mounts for many years. The
recent vehicle development trends like small, light, front wheel drive vehicles with low idle speed
need to use better performance mounts instead of the elastomeric mounts. However, there is still a
substantial room for improvement in passive elastomeric mounts by using nonlinear stiness and
damping characteristics. The use of specic nonlinear characteristics to obtain constant natural

Fig. 4. Mechanical model for elastomeric mount [66].

Fig. 5. Dynamic stiness of elastomeric mount [66].

128 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

frequency in a broad weightload range, use of materials with high internal damping, as well as
materials with highly amplitude-dependent damping and stiness [53] are desirable.

3.2. Passive hydraulic mounts

In 1962, Richard Rasmussen patented a hydraulic mount for increasing damping [42]. The
rising popularity of hydraulic mounts appears due to two reasons [42]. The rst reason is that the
current vehicle development trends for small, light, front wheel drive vehicles with low idle speeds
require more sophisticated mounting systems. The second reason is that the hydraulic mounts
have evolved into highly tunable devices. Various types of hydraulic mounts have been developed
for the vehicle mount systems. It has been reported that signicant improvement in ride comfort
and reduced noise levels have been achieved by using hydraulic mounts compared with the
conventional elastomeric mounts [6,16,20,35]. For example, Bernuchon [6] and Corcoron and
Ticks [16] reported that an improvement in the ride comfort and reduction of 5 dB noise levels has
been achieved. Kadomatsh [35] also reported that bush type hydraulic mounts are expected to
reduce the level of shock to 1/3 while idle shake was maintained equally.
Dierent types of hydraulic mounts have been reported in [16,20,35,42,49]. All hydraulic
mounts reported in the literature are conceptually similar but dier in detailed structural design.
Three typical hydraulic mounts are: hydraulic mount with simple orice; hydraulic mount with
inertia track; hydraulic mount with inertia track and decoupler. Although there are dierences
in some ways between orice and inertia track, all of them cause damping at low frequency
ranges. Damping caused by inertia track is called inertia-augmented-damping and is considered
to have more damping eect [20]. Hydraulic mounts with simple orice or inertia track can be
tuned to have high damping at the frequency corresponding to shock excitation that can be
used to reduce shock level. Usually, the dynamic stiness of hydraulic mount with simple orice
or inertia track is greater than that of a comparable elastomeric mount. Although these kinds of
hydraulic mounts greatly increase damping at low frequencies, they also degrade isolation
performance at higher frequencies. Incorporating a decoupler in the hydraulic mount has re-
solved this problem. A decoupler functions as amplitude limited oating piston. It makes hy-
draulic mount amplitude-dependent at low amplitude displacement. It allows the mount to
behave like an elastomeric mount to provide good vibration isolation at large displacement. It
also allows the hydraulic mount to behave like a normal hydraulic mount providing the
damping for shock excitation.
A simple hydraulic mount, a hydraulic mount with decoupler, and their dynamic stinesses are
shown in Figs. 69, respectively [71]. The hydraulic mount with decoupler seems to have desirous
dynamic performance and is used in many vehicles. A typical hydraulic mount with decoupler
requires incorporation of the following features:
An elastomeric mount capable of supporting the load and acting as a piston to pump the liquid
into the button chamber.
Two separate chambers for uid transfer.
An orice or inertia track to generate damping.
A uid medium.
Sealing between chamber and the outside.
Decoupler to permit low amplitude by-pass of the damping.
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 129

Fig. 6. Simple hydraulic mount [71].

Fig. 7. Hydraulic mount with decoupler [71].

Fig. 8. Dynamic stiness of simple hydraulic mount [71].

For the large input amplitude, the top compliance pumping action will cause the decoupler to
bottom on its seats terminating the ow of liquid around it and sending the ow through the
inertia track. In this case, at extreme low frequency, uid passes freely from the top chamber to
130 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

Fig. 9. Dynamic stiness of hydraulic mount with decoupler [71].

the bottom chamber through the inertia track. Because the bulge stiness of the rubber below is
very low, the static stiness of the hydraulic mount is approximately equal to the static stiness of
the top elastomeric section. As the frequency increases, the uid traveling through the inertia
track creates additional damping, so that the dynamic stiness increases until a maximum value is
reached (called the resonance frequency). Above the resonance frequency, the inertia track es-
sentially closes o. When this occurs, the stiness of the mount is approximately equal to the sum
of the elastomeric stiness and the volumetric stiness. At high frequency, the dynamic stiness of
the hydraulic mount will be higher compared to the elastomeric mount. For low amplitude, uid
travels around the decoupler instead of through the inertia track and causes the mount to behave
like an elastomeric mount. The dynamic response of the hydraulic mount with or without de-
coupler is shown in Fig. 9. As noted before, the dynamic stiness shown in Fig. 9 is both fre-
quency- and amplitude-dependent.
Modeling of the hydraulic mount is essential in order to understand the dynamic response of
the mount system. Dierent types of hydraulic mount systems have been modeled as one-degree to
multi-degree linear and nonlinear systems by various researchers [6,13,16,36,39,54,57,60,67]. The
proposed models depend on the mount structure, analysis method used and purpose of the
analysis. For detailed structural design and analysis, mass of the uid in the mount must be
considered and the mounting system is usually modeled as a multi-degree nonlinear system
[13,36,54,57,60,67]. The detailed discussion on the nonlinear properties of hydraulic mounts is
given by Royston and Singh [54]. A typical example of the mechanical model for a hydraulic
mount is shown in Fig. 10 as reported by Miller [44]. In this model, a mass M representing the
uid in the ow path of the mount and a spring K2 representing the volumetric compliance of the
rubber chambers have been added to the elastomeric model. A detailed discussion of the modeling
of hydraulic mount modeling is given by Flower [20]. In this study, mechanical models have been
developed and dynamic stiness equations have been derived for three typical hydraulic mounts:
simple orice; inertia track; the inertia track with decoupler by using bond-graph analysis method.
Both analytical and experimental research show that the dynamic response of the hydraulic
system depends on the structural design parameters. The eects of inertia track parameters (cross-
section and length) and top chamber stiness have been investigated by Lee et al. [39] and Singh
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 131

Fig. 10. Mechanical model for hydraulic mount [44].

and Kim [60]. The eect of decoupler cleanse was studied by Corcoran and Tichs [16]. The
damping eect of simple orice and inertia track was compared by Flower [20]. By conducting
parametric performance studies, it is possible to achieve an optimal tuning of the hydraulic mount
for specic engine vibration and noise control. Some eort has been made to carry out the op-
timization design of structural parameters [57,59,60,64]. It has also been shown that there exists
an optimum set of mount design parameters for a specic engine mount. It is even possible
through careful design to select the dynamic stiness smaller than the static stiness at certain
frequencies as shown in Fig. 8. This eect is called ``notching'' and is referred to as the minimum
dynamic stiness over a small frequency range. This is useful in applications where the disturbing
frequency is fairly constant, for example, vehicle power train bending frequency.
From the above discussion, one can conclude that the hydraulic mounts with frequency- and
amplitude-dependent characteristics can oer lower dynamic stiness for vibration and noise
isolation and high damping for shock excitation control.

3.3. Semi-active and active mounts

Passive hydraulic mounts cannot resolve all the problems that arise during vehicle operation.
Ushijima and Takano [71] reported that conventional hydraulic mount with decoupler displays
excellent characteristics when subjected to simple sinusoidal inputs. However, this type of mount
is not practical for superimposed inputs because of the signicant nonlinearity of the decoupler.
As discussed earlier, the dynamic response of a hydraulic mount is frequency- and amplitude-
dependent and sensitive to structural parameters. The design of such systems often entails several
iterations during which the parameters of the mounts are tuned to solve the particular vibration
problem existing in the target vehicle. This retuning involves a compromise in which the per-
formance in a particular frequency range may be sacriced for better performance in other fre-
quency ranges. The variations between vehicle and the inherent inaccuracy in the manufacture of
mount parts may signicantly change the desired dynamic response and further reduce the mount
performance.
To solve some problematic aspects of the passive hydraulic mounts and to improve their dy-
namic performance further, semi-active (or in some cases, adaptive) and active vibration control
132 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

techniques have been applied to engine mounting designs. In the semi-active control case, one or
more system parameters can be controlled to adjust the dynamic response of the system. In most
cases, the basic idea of semi-active vibration control is usually adapted to dissipate the vibration
energy by changing the engine mount dynamic properties such as damping. Its scheme is generally
implemented in open-loop architecture, and stability problems do not arise since the vibration
energy is dissipated. On the other hand, in active control, control force is created with actuators in
order to suppress the transmission of the disturbance force to the system. In other words, an
active energy source is supplied to continuously counteract the target energy source. It is generally
implemented in closed-loop architecture.

3.3.1. Semi-active engine mounts

An engine mount with a semi-active control mechanism is called a semi-active engine mount.
Semi-active control can change the dynamic response of the system through controlling system
parameters. The controlled parameters for a semi-active engine mount system can be elastic
stiness and damping. A typical example of both stiness and damping controlled system was
reported by Shoureshi and Graf [59]. In this semi-active hydraulic mount system, which was
equipped with an external bleed, the system resonant frequency was controlled through the
change of the system equivalent spring constant and damping by changing the uid injection
pressure and the restriction of orices, respectively. In most cases, damping control is preferred
because of its simplicity. Electro-rheological (ER) uids have drawn much attention in the semi-
active control of engine mounts because of their rapid change in viscosity properties when an
electric eld is applied. These properties can easily be used to control the damping of the system.
Ushijima [74] and Petek [51] used this principle to increase damping at resonance and reduce the
transmissibility for shock excitation. Duclos [17] proposed an ER uid lled mount with multiple
inertia elements to obtain brand low notch stiness by tuning a combination of ER uid valve to
isolate idle shake. The system parameters can also be tuned to an ono or continuous manner.
The ono system examples are given in [46] and the continuous system examples are given in
[17,26,74].
A semi-active engine mount system usually consists of a passive mount with controllable
elements and a control mechanism. Almost all semi-active mounts reported in the literature are of
hydraulic type. A typical example of a mechanical model for a hydraulic mount is shown in Fig. 11
[44]. In this model, the moving mass M can be adjusted to change the damping force to control the
dynamic response of the system. A typical semi-active ER mounts and its control system is shown
in Fig. 12 [71]. The structure of the ER uid mount is similar to that of a conventional hydraulic
mount except the liquid is an ER uid and orices are in communication with each other and
are made up of electrodes to which high voltage is applied. As ER uids change their apparent
viscosity due to applied electric eld strength, damping force proportional to velocity is selected
as the control force and is controlled by applying a high voltage. The applied voltage is adjusted
in phase and in rectangular waveform. This semi-active system is based on the theory of a one-
degree sky-hook system and used for increasing the damping during the low frequency shock
excitation.
The dynamic response of most semi-active hydraulic engine mount systems is very sensitive to
the system parameters. Research work done on these systems show that only through extensive
parametric study, it is possible to achieve the optimal turning of the mounting system. The semi-
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 133

Fig. 11. Mechanical model for semi-active hydraulic mount [44].

Fig. 12. Semi-active control system for ER uid lled mount [71].

active engine mounting systems are used mainly to improve the system performance at the low
frequency range. For improving the high frequency vibration isolation, active control techniques
are employed.

3.3.2. Active engine mounts

In active vibration control, a counteracting dynamic force is created by one or more actuators
in order to suppress the transmission of the system disturbance force. In other words, an active
energy source should be continuously supplied to counteract the continuously generated target
energy source. A typical active mount consists of a passive mount (elastomeric or hydraulic), force
generating actuator, a structural vibration sensor and an electronic controller. The passive mounts
are used to support the engine in the event of an actuator failure. The actuator provides dynamic
force, which is reasonable in magnitude and responds quickly enough to the control signal. The
structural vibration sensor is a force sensor or an accelerometer providing the controlled signal to
the controller, which adjusts the amplitude and phase of the force generated by the actuator to
minimize the measured sensor signal, so as to reduce the vibration. Dierent types of controllers
are used to active the engine mounts. The controller can be either a feedback or a feed forward
type [66]. The active vibration control is typically implemented with the closed-loop controller
134 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

utilizing on line sensor measurement. The mechanical models of elastomeric and hydraulic active
mounts are shown in Figs. 13 and 14 [44]. In these models, F represents the dynamic force gen-
erated by the actuator. An example of active vibration control is given by Hagino et al. [28]. In
this case, an electromagnetic actuator generates the dynamic force to counteract engine distur-
bance and reduces the frame vibration at engine idle speeds. The actuator was separated with
conventional elastomeric engine mounts and xed on the front portion of the chassis cross-
member. This separated mount and actuator conguration is not as eective as the combination
one because a system that can stop vibration before it gets into the structure can be both more
eective and simpler than the alternative of directly placing it on the structure. Muller et al. [48]
proposed another type of active engine mount, which is a combination of a classical-hydraulic
mount, and an electromagnetic actuator to isolate high frequency vibration. Servo-hydraulic
actuators are also used for that purpose [32]. More recently, active engine mounts with
piezoactuators were also developed to isolate vehicle vibration [58,72]. Piezoactuators have a very
high-speed response, but the displacement is very small and requires a suitable mechanism to
increase the amplitude.

Fig. 13. Mechanical model for active elastomeric mount [44].

Fig. 14. Mechanical model for active hydraulic mount [44].

 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 135

The active mount stiness is equivalent to the stiness of the passive mount (elastomeric and
hydraulic) at every frequency except where engine vibration occurs. The dynamic stiness of el-
astomeric and hydraulic active mounts is shown in Figs. 15 and 16 [66]. At the disturbance fre-
quency, a tonal controller commands the mount to be very soft (reducing the accelerometer or
force sensor signal). The active mounts can overcome the limitations of passive mounts. That is,
active elastomeric mounts can be very sti at low frequencies and very soft at high frequencies.
Active hydraulic mounts can be tuned to achieve adequate damping at the engine bounce fre-
quency and have very low dynamic stiness at higher frequency.
Semi-active mounts are used improve the low frequency features of the system like increasing
damping and providing more broad notching frequency band. The active engine mounting system
can be very sti at low frequency and must be tuned to be very soft at high frequency range. By
providing superior isolation, active engine mounts can allow large engine vibration levels. This
may reduce balance shaft requirements and may allow the vehicle chassis to be lighter [44,66].
Active mounts use sensors, control units and an energy source. Compared with the passive engine
mounting systems, the active engine mounting system will result in increased weight, cost and
energy consumption and reduce reliability of the system [53]. The performance, reliability and
economics still need further improvement. The active engine mounts are considered to be the next
generation of engine mounts [44,66].

Fig. 15. Dynamic stiness of an active elastomeric mount [66].

Fig. 16. Dynamic stiness of hydraulic active mount [66].

136 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

4. Optimization of the engine mount systems

An engine mount system generally consists of three to four engine mounts. The behavior of the
mounting system not only depends on the performance of individual mounts but also on the
complete system. The design of an engine mount system involves the selection of stiness co-
ecients, location and orientation of the individual mounts. Traditionally, the mounts designed
based on experience and extensive analysis procedures. The experimental methods employed
during vehicle development are very time consuming. The degree of system optimization achieved
relying on this approach alone is highly dependent upon the engineers experience, the allowable
exibility in modifying the system and the available time. This situation is greatly improved if the
initial mounting conguration provided for the development activity is near the optimum one.
Dening a near optimum initial mounting conguration is not an easy task by any means due to
the complex nature of the engine inertia properties and the packaging constraints on the mount
locations as imposed by manufacturability considerations. A computerized automated design
method such as optimization with accurate modeling techniques is highly desirable.
Signicant work has been done in this area since the late 1970s. Typical optimization procedure
of engine mount system includes the following: modeling the system; objective selection; con-
straint description; computerized parameter optimization.

4.1. Modeling of engine mount system

A typical engine mounting system includes an engine, engine mounts and a foundation. In
almost all the studies, the engine is modeled as a six DOF rigid body free to translate and rotate
about the three-independent Cartesian axes as shown in Fig. 1. The engine is free to oscillate on its
mounts depending on the direction of excitations. It is reasonable to model the engine as a rigid
body because its natural frequency is much higher than the mounting system. The mounts are
modeled as a spring with a stiness coecient and a corresponding hysteresis or viscous damping
in each of the three principal directions. The foundation is modeled as a rigid body. The reasons
to exclude the vibration of the foundation [34,38] are: (a) the displacement on the body side of the
engine mount is small compared to the engine side so that the engine and mounting system can be
treated outside the context of a full vehicle; (b) it is dicult due to its complexity to fully optimize
the mount system in the context of a full vehicle; (c) since mounting optimization is usually needed
in the early stages of the vehicle design process, it is desirable to optimize the mounting system
before a good denition of the rest of the vehicle can be obtained.
The equations of motion for a six DOF engine model with N mounts and a rigid foundation
can be written as:
MfX g CfX_ g KfX g fF g; 1
where X ; X_ ; X are the 6  1 displacement, velocity and acceleration vectors at the center of gravity
of the engine, [M] the 6  6 engine rigid mass matrix, [K] the 6  6 system complex stiness
matrix, and [C] is the 6  6 viscous damping matrix. {F} represents a 6  1 vector of excitation
forces and moments. Using this equation, the dynamic response and the objective function of the
system can be easily derived. Design parameters such as the location, orientation, stiness and
damping coecients are all included in the system equations and objective functions.
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 137

However, in a real vehicle system, there exist various kinds of vibration modes in the foun-
dation due to the suspension system, body structure and structural components. An accurate
modeling of the engine mount system should include foundation exibility eects to form a
coupled system. Recent research work on engine mount models with exibility of foundation have
been reported in [8,38]. These works show that coupling eects are enormous for low frequency
modes of foundation and that high frequency modes have no coupling eect.

4.2. Optimization

The objective or goal of the optimization must be determined before any optimization
procedure can be carried out. Dierent objectives of optimization have been considered in the
literature. One objective of optimization is to tune the natural frequency of the engine mounting
system to some desired range to avoid resonance and to improve the isolation of vibration and
noise and shock excitation [3,7,25,34,61]. Johnson and Subhadar [34] proposed a design ob-
jective, which tunes all of the system natural frequencies to 616 Hz and decouples each mode
of vibration through dynamic analysis and optimization. The proposed six DOF mounting
natural frequency goals for a four cylinder front wheel drive car are shown in Fig. 17. The
relatively low vertical, pitch and yaw natural frequency ranges are based on the consideration of
isolation of engine disturbance (inertia vertical force and ring torque) during normal operation
range. The relatively high natural frequency range of roll, lateral and fore-aft modes are based
on the consideration to avoid low frequency vibration induced by the road or driving ma-
neuvers. Geck and Patton [25] proposed a lower roll natural frequency for the consideration of
torque isolation and a relatively higher vertical natural frequency for the consideration of
avoiding shock excitation. This is because the requirements for shock prevention and vibration
isolation are conicting ones as discussed earlier. Hence, the selection of natural frequency for a
mounting system is only a compromise for the linear elastomeric mounts. Bernard and Starkey
[7] and Spiekermann [61] attempted to move the system natural frequency away from an un-
desired frequency range to reduce the large transferred forces. Their method is based on the fact

Fig. 17. Example of natural frequency goal for six DOF engine model [15].
138 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142

that when an excitation frequency is near one of the natural frequencies of the system, both the
rigid body displacement and the force transmitted through the mount can be large, so by
moving the system natural frequency away from a common operating excitation frequency, the
transmitted force can be reduced. Swanson et al. [69] showed that the transmitted force could be
directly minimized in order to determine a truly optimal design of the mounts. Ashraum et al.
[5] also used these criteria to minimize the dynamic force transmitted from the engine to the
body. Other studies in the literature show that these two objectives are widely used [38,65,76].
Recently Bretl [8] proposed a new method, which seeks minimal vibration response, regardless
of the engine mounting system modes. This procedure is based on the response-based dynamic
correlation method.
Once a set of objectives is established for the performance characteristics of an engine mounting
system, the constraints on the design variable must be determined. There are two kinds of con-
straints: One is the constraint that directly keeps the design variable within lower and upper limits.
All design variables have such constraints. For example, the mount location and the orientation
are constrained by the available engine compartment space, and there is a limit to the combination
of spring rate and damping coecient that can be incorporated into a single mount. Another kind
of constraint is an indirect constraint such as the maximum allowable deection for the engine
center of gravity or the desirable natural frequency range. Since both the objective function and
constraint equations are nonlinear, usually a nonlinear constrained optimization technique has to
be used to obtain a satisfactory solution.
The present work on the optimization of the engine mount system shows some limitations.
Most of the reported work considered only the optimization of elastomeric mounting systems,
and the elastomeric mounts are modeled as linear stiness and damping (viscous and hysteresis).
Suresh et al. [65] attempted to optimize the engine mounting system with hydraulic mounts. In
their work, the linear frequency-dependent damping properties of hydraulic mount were con-
sidered. The nonlinear stiness and damping in elastomeric mounts and the complex character-
istics of hydraulic mounts such as nonlinear frequency- and amplitude-dependent stiness and
damping are not considered. As pointed out by Rivin [53], there exists a great variation in the
mount stiness, total engine weight, the position of CG of the engine and the moment of inertia in
actual vehicles, and these variations will greatly aect the results of optimization of engine
mounting systems and lead to limitations for practical use.

5. Conclusion

Based on the above review of the literature on automotive vehicle engine mounting systems, we
can summarize:
The ideal engine mounts should isolate engine vibration caused by engine disturbances in the
engine speed range and prevent engine bounce from shock excitation. This implies that the dy-
namic stiness and damping of engine mount should be frequency- and amplitude-dependent.
The development of an engine mounting system should concentrate on improvement of such
frequency- and amplitude-dependent properties.
The conventional elastomeric mounts do not meet all the requirements and can only oer a
trade-o between static deection and vibration isolation. But elastomeric mount properties
 Y. Yu et al. / Mechanism and Machine Theory 36 (2001) 123142 139

like compactness, cost-eectiveness and low maintenance make elastomeric mounts still very
attractive.
Passive hydraulic mounts can provide better performance than elastomeric mounts especially in
the low frequency range, but they cannot solve all the inherent problems that arise during ve-
hicle operations. Semi-active techniques are used to further improve the performance of hy-
draulic mounts by making them more tunable.
The active engine mounting system can be very sti at low frequencies and be tuned to be very
soft at higher frequencies to isolate the vibration. Since the active mounts use sensors, control
units and an energy source, the active engine mounting system will increase weight, cost and
energy consumption and reduce reliability of the system. The performance, reliability and eco-
nomics of these systems need further improvement. The active engine mounting systems have
been considered to be the next generation of engine mounts.
The performance of the whole engine mounting system not only depends on the performance of
individual mounts, but the optimum design of the whole system as well. Computerized auto-
matic design methods employing optimization techniques can be quite useful in obtaining an
eective design. The present work on the optimization of the engine mount system shows some
limitations. Further work is needed to consider the nonlinear variations in the properties of
mounts.

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