Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng.

(2018) 31:31
https://doi.org/10.1186/s10033-018-0237-2 Chinese Journal of Mechanical
Engineering

ORIGINAL ARTICLE Open Access

Optimization Design and Performance

Analysis of Vehicle Powertrain Mounting System
Han Zhou1, Hui Liu1,2*, Pu Gao1 and Chang‑Le Xiang1,2

Abstract 
The design strategies for powertrain mounting systems play an important role in the reduction of vehicular vibra‑
tion and noise. As stiffness and damping elements connecting the transmission system and vehicle body, the rubber
mount exhibits better vibration isolation performance than the rigid connection. This paper presents a complete
design process of the mounting system, including the vibration decoupling, vibration simulation analysis, topol‑
ogy optimization, and experimental verification. Based on the 6-degrees-of-freedom vibration coupling model of
the powertrain mounting system, an optimization algorithm is used to extract the best design parameters of each
mount, thus rendering the mounting system fully decoupled and the natural frequency well configured, and the
optimal parameters are used to design the mounting system. Subsequently, vibration simulation analysis is applied to
the mounting system, considering both transmission and road excitations. According to the results of finite element
analysis, the topological structure of the metal frame of the front mount is optimized to improve the strength and
dynamic characteristics of the mounting system. Finally, the vibration bench test is used to verify the availability of the
optimization design with the analysis of acceleration response and vibration transmissibility of the mounting system.
The results show that the vibration isolation performance of the mounting system can be improved effectively using
the vibration optimal decoupling method, and the structural modification of the metal frame can well promote the
dynamic characteristics of the mounting system.
Keywords:  Mounting system, Optimization algorithm, Vibration simulation analysis, Topological structure,
Acceleration response, Vibration transmissibility

1 Introduction the allocation of system natural frequency and the vibra-

The vibration isolation design of vehicle powertrain sys- tion decoupling between DOFs as the objective func-
tems is important for improving the noise, vibration, tion and the stiffness and position of mounts as design
and harshness performance of vehicles, and it has been variables to perform the optimization. Consequently,
widely studied. The rubber mount structure design of the vibration coupling between each translational DOF was
transmission system, which is the main vibration source, reduced and the system natural frequencies were ensured
directly affects the vibration coupling state of each degree beyond the desired range. For the vibration of the engine
of freedom (DOF) of the powertrain system, and also mounting system, Hata et al. [4] pointed out that damp-
affects the vehicle ride and handling performance [1]. ing effect achieved by optimizing the mount position is
Therefore, vibration optimal decoupling is an effective better than that obtained by optimizing the mount stiff-
way to improve the vibration isolation effect of the rub- ness. Demic [5] considered the response force and torque
ber mount [2]. of the mounting points as the objective function to opti-
Johnson et al. [3], for the first time, performed the opti- mize the positions of the mounting system. Furthermore,
mization of the mounting system design. He considered this method was suitable for both rubber mounts and
hydraulic mounts.
*Correspondence: liuhui_bit@163.com Sun et  al. [6] decoupled the stiffness matrix of the
1
School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, powertrain mounting system and achieved the vibra-
Beijing 100081, China tion decoupling of the system. Hu et  al. [7] proposed a
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article

© The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license,
and indicate if changes were made.
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 2 of 13

method for investigating a powertrain system with spec- In previous studies, researchers only optimized the
trally varying mount properties, especially for torque mounting system according to the results of the vibra-
roll axis decoupling. Refs. [8, 9] established the 12-DOF tion decoupling, or only applied the structural topology
model of the mounting system using the ADAMS soft- optimization to the mount frame, and subsequently veri-
ware, and researched its vibration isolation performance. fied the validity of the design scheme via simulation or
Refs. [10–12] utilized the multi-objective topology opti- experiment. A comprehensive and complete process of
mization to modify the structure of the mounting sys- optimization design and performance analysis of vehicle
tem, considering the static and dynamic loads of the powertrain mounting systems has not been studied yet.
system. Shangguan et al. [13, 14] established the 13-DOF This paper presents a complete design process of the
dynamic model, which includes 6 DOFs of the power- mounting system, including the vibration decoupling,
train, 3 DOFs of the body, and 4 DOFs of the unsprung vibration simulation analysis, topology optimization, and
mass. Considering the vibration and left ear noise as experimental verification. According to the actual state
the objective function, parameter matching and opti- of the mounting system, the 6-DOF vibration model is
mization of the mounting system were carried out to established. The natural frequency and vibration mode
achieve better vibration isolation performance. In addi- are obtained using eigenvalue analysis. Considering the
tion, he also investigated the effect of different damage low-frequency vibration decoupling rate as the objec-
parameters on the prediction of fatigue life of rubber tive function, the design parameters (including mount
isolators. Angrosch et  al. [15] investigated the dynamic hardness, thickness, and stiffness in all directions) that
performance of hydraulic mounting systems, considering render the mounting system fully decoupled and the
engine torque and road excitation comprehensively. Zhen natural frequency well configured are extracted, and the
et  al. [16] established 1-DOF and 3-DOF models, con- optimal parameters are used to design the mounting sys-
sidering the influence of the stiffness ratio of the mount tem. Subsequently, the mounting system is simulated and
frame on the vibration isolation material. To ensure that analyzed to study the vibration response. The torsional
the natural frequency of the system is lower than the excitation of the shafting is calculated as the transmis-
first-order harmonic frequency of the engine excitation, sion excitation using the equivalent model, and the road
the stiffness of the mount frame should be 1–10 times excitation is simulated using the sinusoidal scanning sig-
that of the vibration isolation material. Wang et  al. [17] nal based on the data of acceleration measured by the
considered the generalized force transmissibility (GFT) actual vehicle. A comprehensive analysis shows that the
and sum of GFT integrals as the vibration isolation index, strength and dynamic characteristics of the front mount
and proposed an optimization approach for powertrain should be improved, and hence, topology optimization is
mounting systems. applied to the metal frame. Finally, the vibration bench
In recent years, active and semi-active mounts have test of the mounting system is carried out to extract
become a hot topic in the research on powertrain mount- the acceleration signals in time domain and frequency
ing systems. Fan et al. [18] analyzed the configuration of a domain of the upper and lower parts of the mounts. The
new semi-active hydraulic mount with a variable-stiffness data is analyzed and the vibration transmissibility is cal-
decoupling membrane and tested its dynamic charac- culated using the corresponding root-mean-square val-
teristics. Chen et al. [19] researched the dynamic model ues of acceleration. The results showed that the design
and experimental testing of magnetorheological fluid process of the mounting system could well improve the
mounts, especially at a wide frequency. Ladipo et al. [20] vibration isolation performance.
presented the simulation of magnetorheological elasto-
mers (MREs) as engine mounts. A four-parameter model 2 Dynamic Model of Powertrain Mounting System
was used to model the MRE mounts and the performance The mounts of the integrated transmission system are
was compared with those of passive or rubber mounts. divided into left, right, and front mounts (see Figure 1).
Zheng et  al. [21, 22] used the aforementioned model to The powertrain device is regarded as a rigid body with
control the engine mount system with concurrent con- elastic support, and a simplified model of the three-point
sideration of random road input and engine excitation. mounting system is established as shown in Figure  2. A
Pan et al. [23] designed the fuzzy-proportional-integral- Cartesian coordinate system G0-xyz is defined as the
derivative switching control strategy for the magnetorhe- global coordinate. G0 is the center of mass in static bal-
ological semi-active mounting system. Farjoud et al. [24] ance; the x-axis is parallel to the output axis of the inte-
developed a detailed mathematical model of semi-active grated transmission system; the positive y-axis indicates
magnetorheological engine and transmission mounts the vehicle driving direction; the z-axis is determined
using multi-physics modeling techniques for physical using the right hand rule.
systems with various energy domains.
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 3 of 13

integrated transmission system is established, the mate-

rial density of the parts is set, the inertial properties are
analyzed using software, and finally the system quality,
position of mass center, moment of inertia, inertia prod-
uct, etc. are obtained:
n

K = ET T
i T i k iT iEi, (3)
i=1

 
kui
ki =  kvi , (4)
kwi
 
1 0 0 0 zi −yi
E i =  0 1 0 −zi 0 xi , (5)
0 0 1 yi −xi 0
Figure 1  Left mount, right mount, and front mount
 
cos αui cos βui cos γui
T i =  cos αvi cos βvi cos γvi , (6)
cos αwi cos βwi cos γwi
where ki is the stiffness matrix of the mount i, and kui,
kvi, and kwi indicate the stiffness along the elastic axes of
the mount i. According to the empirical formula, Ei is
the coordinate matrix of the mount i obtained from the
position of each point. Further, Ti is the orientation angle
matrix of mount i, and the elements in the main diagonal
of the matrix are 1.
The eigenvalues and eigenvectors obtained from eigen-
value analysis are employed in the vibration decoupling
Figure 2  Simplified model of the three-point mounting system
as described below.

3 Vibration Optimal Decoupling of the Mounting

The vibration response of the system System
 in the global
The rigid-body vibration of the mounting system is
T
coordinate system is set as u = x, y, z, θx , θy , θz ,
where x, y, and z are the translational motions along the decoupled and the comprehensive vibration isolation
three coordinate axes; θx, θy, and θz are the rotational performance of the mounting system is improved by
motions around the three coordinate axes. For the pow- using the vibration energy decoupling method and non-
ertrain mounting system simplified as a rigid body, the linear optimization method.
undamped free vibration equation in the global coordi-
nate system is obtained as 3.1 Design Variables
The vibration coupling of the mounting system is closely
M ü+Ku = 0, (1) related to the supporting position, installation angle, and
where stiffness of the mounts. Owing to the limitation of the
vehicle arrangement, the supporting position and instal-
lation angle of the mounting cannot be changed easily.
 
m
 m  The stiffness parameters of the mounts can be independ-
m ent variables of the optimization method, mainly deter-
 
M= , (2)
 
 Jxx −Jxy −Jxz 
 mined by the rubber hardness and size. To facilitate the
 −Jxy Jyy −Jyz  application of the optimization results to the system
−Jxz −Jyz Jzz design, the hardness of the left and right rubber mounts
where m is the mass parameter, and Jxx, Jyy, Jzz, Jxy, Jxz, Jyx, and the hardness and thickness of the front rubber mount
and Jzx are the inertia parameters. The 3D model of the
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 4 of 13

are considered as design variables. Therefore, there are Table 1  Ranges and initial values of design variables
three design variables in the optimization model: Hardness and thickness of the rubber mount Min Initial Max
 
f Hsr (HS) 10 50 80
X = Hsr , Hf , Hs , (7)
Hf (mm) 10 21 40
f
where Hsr is the hardness of the left and right mounts; Hs Hsf (HS) 10 50 80
is the hardness of the front mount; Hf is the thickness of
the front mount. of the natural vibration of the system can be calculated
using the quality matrix and mode shapes, and when it is
3.2 Constraint Conditions expressed in the form of a matrix, it can be defined as the
3.2.1 Configuration Range of Natural Frequency energy distribution matrix.
The natural frequency of the mounting system is guar- The maximum kinetic energy of the integrated trans-
anteed to be in a reasonable range when matching the mission system in the nth natural vibration is
mounting system.
The natural frequency of√ the direction around the

n
Tmax = ωn2 [φn ]T [M][φn ] 2, (11)
y-axis should be less than 1/ 2 of the engine idling vibra-
tion frequency, and hence, the natural frequency of the
y-axis should be 6 6
ωn2  
n
Tmax = φnl φnk mkl , (12)
nNmin 1 2
fθy ≤ √ , (8) l=1 k=1
Z · 60 2
where ωn is the nth natural frequency of the mounting
where n is the number of cylinders; Nmin is the engine system, mkl is the element in the kth row and lth column
idle speed; Z is the number of strokes. The engine of the of the mass matrix, φnl is the lth element of the mode
vehicle is a V type 12-cylinder engine, and the idle speed shapes [φn ], and φnk is the kth element.
is 800 r/min. The calculated natural frequency in the tor- The energy allocated to the kth generalized coordinates
sional direction should be less than 57 Hz. is obtained as
In order to ensure the service life of the mounting
system, the natural frequencies of the system are gener- 6
ωn2 
ally greater than 5  Hz; in order to avoid the resonance Tk = φnl φnk mkl . (13)
2
of the mounting system, the general requirement of the l=1
minimum difference between the natural frequencies is In the nth natural vibration, the percentage of energy
approximately 1  Hz. According to the engine speed and allocated to the kth generalized coordinates in the total
sensitive area for the vibration of human body, the vibra- energy of the system is
tion frequency ranges of each direction are given by
6
5 Hz ≤ fx ≤ 57 Hz, 5 Hz ≤ fy ≤ 57 Hz, 
φnl φnk mkl
(9) Tk
6 Hz ≤ fz ≤ 57 Hz, Tnk = =
l=1
× 100% . (14)
n
Tmax 6 
 6
φnl φnk mkl
5 Hz ≤ fθx ≤ 57 Hz, 5 Hz ≤ fθy ≤ 57 Hz, l=1 k=1
(10)
5 Hz ≤ fθz ≤ 57 Hz. The percentage Tnk is defined as the vibration decou-
pling rate of the DOF k. If Tnk = 100%, the energy of the
3.2.2 Range of Rubber Hardness and Thickness mounting system in the nth natural vibration is concen-
According to the mechanical design manual and related trated in the kth DOF, i.e., the kth DOF is completely
literature, we can determine the range and initial value of decoupled from the other DOFs.
the rubber hardness. According to the vehicle arrange- In summary, the objective function of the energy
ment space, we can determine the range and initial value decoupling method can be set to
of the rubber thickness of the front mount, as listed in
Table 1. 6 
  
100 − max T k .

Cr (X) = n  (15)
k

3.3 Objective Function n=1
According to the 6-DOF dynamic equation of the sys- 3.4 Optimization Results
tem, the natural frequencies and vibration modes can Based on the integrated analysis program of iSIGHT
be calculated. Subsequently, the energy distribution and MATLAB, the mounting system parameters are
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 5 of 13

Table 2  Objective function before and after optimization Table 3 System frequency configuration before and

after optimization
Objective function Original Optimized Reduction ratio (%)
Direction Original (Hz) Optimized (Hz)
Cr 172 114 34
x 20.70 5.37
y 9.00 36.11
z 11.19 19.77
optimized using a nonlinear method. Finally, the objec-
θx 56.91 24.49
tive function is convergent and evidently reduced by 34%,
θy 51.77 31.33
as presented in Table 2.
θz 42.56 28.53
Before and after optimization, the frequency configura-
tion of the mounting system is given in Table 3.
Table  3 indicates that the frequency configuration
before optimization is not reasonable because the vibra- the front mount is extracted, and finally, the static analy-
tion frequencies in the θx and θy directions are close to sis of the mounts is carried out.
the engine idle frequency and prone to resonance. The
frequencies after optimization are within the frequency 4.1 Vibration Response Analysis of Integrated
range and not close to the engine idle frequency. Transmission Box
Before and after optimization, the vibration decoupling In order to obtain the torsional excitation of the shafting
rate of the mounting system is presented in Table 4. as the boundary condition to calculate the forced vibra-
Table 4 indicates that, before optimization, the decou- tion response of the system, the normalized equivalent
pling rate of the system is between 31.2% and 99%; the model of the torsional vibration of the integrated trans-
decoupling rate in the x, θy, and θz directions is relatively mission is established.
high, and can reach more than 85%; the decoupling rate The shafting of the transmission is a continuous and
in the other directions is lower than 70%. After optimiza- complex multi-DOF quality system. The mass and elas-
tion, except the decoupling rate in the θx direction, which tic distributions of the system are uneven, and hence,
is 61.5%, the rest are more than 70%. The decoupling rate the discrete approximation model of multi-DOF con-
of the optimized system is evidently increased, and the centrated mass could be adopted. The actual system is
overall isolation performance of the mounting system is transformed into a system with rigid bodies without
improved. elastic deformation and elastic shaft sections without
By using the above method, the optimal design param- the moment of inertia [13, 14]. The sixth-gear equivalent
eters of the system can be obtained, and the stiffness of model of transmission system is shown in Figure 3.
each mount in different directions after optimization is The engine torque model is established by consider-
listed in Table 5. The hardness and thickness of the rub- ing the excitation torque of the engine gas pressure and
ber mount after optimization are listed in Table 6. reciprocating inertia force. Subsequently, the torque sig-
nal of the sixth-gear output shaft when the engine speed
3.5 Mounting Design is 2200 r/min is calculated using the normalized equiva-
The mounting cushion adopts a combination design lent model, as shown in Figure 4.
method of vulcanized rubber, anti-aging agent, and The vertical force of left bearing housing in one period
metal frame. The appropriate choice of vulcanized rub- is calculated according to the force analysis of gears and
ber, proportion of anti-aging agent, and shape and size of shifts. The signal can be used as the boundary condition
the metal frame can result in the hardness and thickness of the mounting system to calculate the forced vibra-
parameters of the rubber mount presented in Table  6. tion response of the system. The deformation and stress
The combination of the rubber, agent, and metal frame nephograms of the box calculated using finite element
enables the achievement of a strong bond and facilitates analysis are shown in Figure 5.
deformation in the directions of stretching, compression, Subsequently, the reaction force at six fixed bolt holes
and shearing. of the front mount is extracted, as shown in Figure 6.

4 Vibration Simulation Analysis of the Mounting 4.2 Vibration Response Analysis of the Mounts
System 4.2.1 Response Analysis of the Transmission Excitation
In this paper, the integrated transmission box and the The root-mean-square values of the reaction forces at
mounts are analyzed separately. First, the transient six bolt holes extracted as described above are applied to
dynamic response of the integrated transmission box is the corresponding six bolt holes in the front mount. The
analyzed. Subsequently, the dynamic response force of
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 6 of 13

Table 
4  Vibration decoupling rate of the system
before and after optimization
Direction Original (%) Optimized (%)

x 98.69 99.93
y 31.22 71.41
z 53.65 72.25
θx 65.42 61.50
θy 92.67 89.35
θz 86.65 90.99

Table 5  Stiffness in different directions after optimization

Stiffness Right mount (N/m) Left mount (N/m) Front mount
(N/m)

kx 867,805 867,805 196,711

ky 18,372,000 18,372,000 196,711
kz 18,372,000 18,372,000 21,699,000

Table 6 Hardness and thickness of the rubber mount

after optimization
Hardness and thickness of the rubber mount Optimized
Figure 3  Model of the transmission system
Hsr (HS) 23
Hf (mm) 13
Hsf (HS) 79

vertical force at the upper bearing is extracted, and the

root-mean-square value is calculated to be loaded on the
left and right mounts in the form of uniform pressure.
The deformation and stress nephograms of the mounts
under the transmission excitation are shown in Figure 7.

4.2.2 Response Analysis of the Road Excitation

Road excitation is a significant excitation for driving a
vehicle. Normally, road excitation is expressed using road
surface roughness, and when loaded into the mounting
model, the spatial signal must be transformed into time Figure 4  Torque signal of the sixth-gear output shaft
domain. In practical applications, we usually use the har-
monic superposition method to simulate the road rough-
ness model [15, 16]. However, this method is too complex The deformation and stress nephograms of the mounts
and difficult for the simulation of the actual situation under the road excitation are shown in Figure 8.
of the road, and hence, we use the method of harmonic The maximum deformation and stress of the mounts
response analysis to analyze the vibration characteristics under the transmission excitation and road excitation are
of each mount [12]. The maximum amplitude of vibration given in Table 7.
acceleration collected in the actual vehicle is considered It can be observed from Figure 8 and Table 7 that the
as the amplitude of the input signal, and the sinusoidal front part of the front mount frame has a maximum
scan is carried out in the range of 0.5–10  Hz for each deformation of 0.82  mm, mainly because there are no
mount at an interval of 0.01 Hz. rubber blocks. The stress in the front mount is mainly
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 7 of 13

flexibility and weighted natural frequency. The static

multi-load condition and dynamic vibration character-
istics of the mounting system are considered, and the
expression is given by
m
 2
 Ck (ρ) − Ckmin
minξ(ρ) = wk
k=1
Ckmax − Ckmin
1 (16)
n

 Λmax
i − Λ(ρ) 2
+ wi max − Λmin
,
i=1
Λ i i

where Ckmaxand Ckmin are the maximum and minimum

values of flexibility in the three working conditions,
respectively, which can be obtained from the topology
optimization by considering the minimum flexibility as
the objective function; Λmax
i and Λmin
i are the maximum
and minimum values of natural frequency of each order,
respectively, which can be obtained from the topol-
ogy optimization by considering the maximum natural
frequency as the objective function; wk and wi are the
weighting factors of flexibility and modal frequency,
respectively.
The corresponding data is provided as input to Hyper-
works and the Optistruct module is used for topology
optimization. Finally, we obtain the optimized metal
frame of the front mount, as shown in Figure 9.
The mass after optimization is 1.31  kg less than that
of the original model, accounting for 14.2% of the origi-
nal mass. Subsequently, analysis of the optimized metal
Figure 5  Deformation and stress nephograms of the box frame shows that the maximum stress of the three work-
ing conditions [static, undulating road (40  km/h), and
cement road (50  km/h)] is reduced to a certain extent,
and the strength of the structure is enhanced. The first-
distributed in the six bolt holes and two sides of the ver-
order natural frequency is 538  Hz, which is away from
tical part of the metal frame, and the bolt hole of the
the resonant sensitive region of the integrated transmis-
horizontal part has a maximum stress of 82.017  MPa.
sion. In summary, the dynamic characteristics of the
Compared with the left and right mounts, the front
mounting system are improved.
mount has larger deformation and stress, and is more
easily damaged during use, and hence, it is necessary to
6 Vibration Bench Test
improve the reliability of the front mount.
The vibration acceleration signal of the upper and lower
parts of each mount in time domain and frequency
5 Optimization Design of the Metal Frame
domain are extracted. The schematic diagram of the
We only modify the metal frame of the front mount as
vibration table test is shown in Figure 10.
the left and right mounts satisfy the structural strength
and performance requirements. Considering the flex-
6.1 Analysis of Test Results
ibility (static) and vibration natural frequency (dynamic)
The gearbox remains in the sixth gear, and the engine
of the components as the objective function, the topo-
speed is 2200  r/min. From the test results, we can
logical structure of the metal frame of the front mount is
observe that the vibration acceleration of the upper and
optimized.
lower parts of each mount is reduced to a certain extent,
In this paper, a multi-objective optimization model
and the attenuation effect of the lower part of the front
of stiffness and low-order natural frequencies is estab-
mount is more evident than that of the others, as shown
lished. The objective function is a combined index of the
in Figure 11.
global response of the structure, including the weighted
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 8 of 13

Figure 6  Reaction force at six fixed bolt holes

Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 9 of 13

Figure 7  Deformation and stress nephograms of the mounts under the transmission excitation
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 10 of 13

Figure 8  Deformation and stress nephograms of the mounts under the road excitation

of the rubber. The figure of frequency domain also shows

Table 7  Maximum deformation and stress of the mounts that the vibration optimal decoupling and topology opti-
Maximum deformation (mm) Maximum stress (MPa) mization can evidently attenuate the vibration of the
front mount, especially in the frequency band of 1250 Hz.
Front mount 0.82 82.017
Subsequently, the vibration acceleration signal of the
Left mount 0.00162 6.08
upper and lower parts of each mount is extracted when
Right mount 0.00212 7.94
the gearbox is in different gears, and the engine speed
remains 2200 r/min. The root-mean-square values of the
acceleration and vibration transmissibility are calculated.
It can be observed from Figure 11 that the root-mean- The vibration transmissibility of the front mount before
square values of the vibration acceleration before and and after the optimization is shown in Figure 12.
after the optimization are 4.84g and 0.82g, respectively, Figure  12 shows that the vibration transmissibility of
indicating a reduction of 83% and hence, the vibration is the front mount does not fluctuate when the gearbox is
evidently attenuated. This is because we optimize both in different gears, which indicates that the vibration iso-
the rubber and metal frame of the front mount, which lation performance of the mount is not related to the
changes the ratio of stiffness of the metal frame to that transmission ratio. The vibration transmissibility after
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 11 of 13

Figure 9  Topology optimization of the metal frame

1
Figure 12  Vibration transmissibility of the front mount before and
2 after the optimization

6 5 4 3 4 5 6

Figure 10  Schematic diagram of vibration table test. 1. Engine, 2.

Input torque and speed sensors, 3. Powertrain system, 4. Output
torque and speed sensors, 5. Gearbox, 6. Motor

Figure 13  Vibration transmissibility of the left and right mounts

before and after the optimization

the optimization is approximately 1/3 of that before the

optimization. It shows that the optimization method can
significantly reduce the vibration transmissibility and
effectively improve the vibration isolation performance
of the mounting system.
The vibration transmissibility of the left and right
mounts before and after the optimization is shown in
Figure 13.
Figure 11  Vibration acceleration signal of the lower part of the front From Figure  13, it can be observed that the vibration
mount in time domain and frequency domain
transmissibility of the left mount after the optimization
Zhou et al. Chin. J. Mech. Eng. (2018) 31:31 Page 12 of 13

decreases slightly and that of the right mount before reduction technology of vehicle transmission system. E-mail: gaopu1989@126.
com.
and after the optimization is not significantly changed. Chang-Le Xiang, born in 1963, is currently a professor at Beijing Institute
The vibration isolation performance is not significantly of Technology, China. He received his PhD degree from Beijing Institute of
improved because only the parameters of the rubber are Technology, China, in 2001. His research interests include vehicle dynamics and
electromechanical drives. E-mail: xiangcl@bit.edu.cn.
optimized, whereas the other parts remain unchanged.
In summary, the mounting system has an appar- Competing Interests
ent attenuation effect on the vibration generated by the The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
transmission system. The vibration optimal decoupling Ethics Approval and Consent to Participate
and topology optimization have significantly improved Not applicable.
the vibration isolation performance of the front mount
Funding
and proved the effectiveness of the design scheme. Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
51375047, 51775040).
7 Conclusions
In this study, based on the 6-DOF coupling vibration Publisher’s Note
model of the mounting system, an optimization algo- Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in pub‑
lished maps and institutional affiliations.
rithm was used to extract the best design parameters
of the mounts, thus rendering the mounting system Received: 23 June 2017 Accepted: 16 April 2018
fully decoupled and frequency well configured, and the
optimal parameters were used to design the mount-
ing system. Subsequently, the vibration response of the
mounting system was simulated and analyzed, consid-
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