Limitations of Rigid Body Descriptions for Heavy-Duty Diesel Engine Vibration

Internal combustion engine vibration modeling commonly relies on assuming the engine is a linearly reacting rigid body, thereby ignoring rotating, reciprocating, and nonsolid engine components. Limitations of this approach are identified from a series of experiments on a heavy-duty in-line six-cylinder Diesel engine typical of Class VIII trucks. Measurement of all three orthogonal vibration force components were made at each of three engine mounts during standard impact-excitation modal identification tests on the quiescent engine and during engine operation. The running-engine vibration forces, measured throughout the test engine load and speed operating envelope, were projected onto the quiescent-engine rigid body modes to determine the modal content and residual vibration as a function of frequency. Modal decomposition results for the running engine show that the quiescent-engine rigid body modes, with modal frequencies between 5.6 and 26.3 Hz, account for 80 percent or more of the measured engine vibration forces for all engine speeds and loads in a bandwidth from zero to 200 Hz. The likely origins of the residual vibration within this bandwidth are discussed.