Design and Analysis of a New Semiactive Hydraulic Mount for a Wide-Range Tunable Damping without Magneto-Rheological/Electric-Rheological Fluid

A hydraulic engine mount (HEM) is an advanced tuned mass damper (TMD) system used to isolate the noise and vibration from the engine to the chassis. This paper aims to design a semiactive HEM based on the TMD model, which only tunes damping without affecting the other lumped parameters of the TMD system. Firstly, the dynamic equations of an HEM modeled as a TMD system are derived based on the linear lumped parameter model (LPM). Each lumped parameter of the HEM is analyzed to identify the relevant parameters that affect damping. Secondly, a newly designed semiactive HEM design is proposed that utilizes a helical moving plate to simultaneously control both the inertia track area and length, resulting in precise damping tuning. To illustrate the dynamic performance of the newly designed HEM, calculations are presented based on various parameters for its tunable damping range and dynamic stiffness spectrum. Additionally, to demonstrate the performance of vibration isolation, this paper determines the optimal length and dynamic stiffness of the inertia track to minimize the transmissibility. Thirdly, to reveal the superiority of the newly designed HEM over the MR fluid mount, an example is presented where the MR fluid medium is used in place of conventional hydraulic fluid in the HEM while keeping all other parameters constant. Specifically, the novel semiactive HEM employs conventional hydraulic fluid and is spiral-driven by a moving plate while the MR fluid-based HEM is controlled by an additional tunable magnetic intensity controller. The nonlinear LPM of the newly designed HEM is verified by comparing the dynamic stiffness spectrum with the experimental results in the published literature. Then, the nonlinear LPM of the MR fluid mount is established, and its dynamic stiffness spectrum is calculated and compared with that of the newly designed HEM. The results indicate that the newly designed HEM and MR fluid mount have similar ranges of dynamic stiffness control, but the newly designed HEM does not require expensive MR/ER fluid or additional continuous external energy input to regulate the dynamic stiffness. Moreover, when using inexpensive low-viscosity hydraulic fluid, the newly designed HEM can provide a wider range of dynamic stiffness control.