Study on vibration characteristics of anisotropic vehicle rubber bushings by conformal contact force analysis

Abstract

For ride comfort and handling performance design of vehicles, anisotropic rubber bushings are used as the connection between lower arms and body frames. The nonlinear vibration performance with the deformation amplitude is advantageous to minimise vibration transmission at low magnitude responses and to reduce deformation at large excitations. During transient deformation, the area under the force-deformation curve serves as an indicator for evaluating vibration reduction and isolation performance. The elastomer geometric variables such as the relative radius between the inner and outer contact surfaces are effective design parameters for controlling bushing dynamic behaviour. This study presents a dynamic model to understand the nonlinear stiffness by the contact theory after addressing the actions between elastomer surfaces. The proposed model was confirmed by the measured dynamics stiffness and damping performance. Their influence on the vehicle ride comfort was investigated.