Piezo-Actuated Active Decoupler Hydraulic Engine Mount

Hydraulic mounts are widely used in the automotive industry to isolate the engine and chassis from each other. For these passive economic vibration isolators the parameter values and characteristics are fixed. As a result, they cannot properly attenuate the complicated vibration transmitted from the engine. In this paper development of a new active mount using piezoelectric materials is described. The typical decoupler of the mount has been replaced by a set of piezoelectric actuators. The actuator consists of two piezoelectric bimorph cantilevers and the beams are covered by a thin rubber layer. The actuator moves upon receiving the signal from the controller, and it changes the dynamic performance of the mount accordingly. Mathematical modeling of the active mount is derived and the simulated results are presented for different voltage signals. Simulations demonstrate the performance of the designed active engine mount to deal with complicated vibration patterns.