Automotive engine mounts are used to support engine weight, protect engine from road inputs and isolate transmission of vibrations created by the engine, which has a drastic effect on the noise generated inside the passenger cabin. Most common types of engine mounts are elastomeric and hydraulic mounts, the former having better vibration isolation characteristics whereas the latter displays better shock isolation. Elastomeric mounts are widely used for their low initial cost, while hydraulic mounts with inertia track and decoupler are chosen for their good vibration isolation and shock excitation characteristics. However, hydraulic mounts with inertia track and decoupler are not appropriate for small segment and commercial vehicles due their high initial cost. In this thesis, the effect of the addition of a dry friction damper on the performance of elastomeric automobile engine mounts is investigated. Friction dampers are used to attenuate vibration amplitudes in many applications such as gas turbine engines, railway vehicles, space structures and civil buildings. In this study, a friction element is added to the engine mount at its axial direction and its effect is studied. Results show that, the addition of dry friction damping to the original system increases vibration isolation performance significantly at low frequencies / whereas, due to the increased stiffness of the system, at high frequencies dry friction damper has a mitigating effect on performance. In order to overcome this problem, original system parameters are modified. In the modified system a softer mount that increase vibration isolation performance at high frequencies / but, which might cause excessive static deflection due to reduced stiffness of the system is used. On the other hand, addition of dry friction damping prevents excessive static deflections due to the increased stiffness effect and also increases the performance at high frequencies due to the soft mount. Final results showed that vibration isolation performance at low frequencies increases considerably while vibration isolation performance at high frequency is similar and even slightly better than the original system with addition of dry friction damping.

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Forced response analysis of bladed disk assemblies plays a vital role in rotor blade design and has been drawing a great deal of attention both from research community and engine industry for more than half a century. However because of the phenomenon called &lsquo / mistuning&rsquo / , which destroys the cyclic symmetry of a rotor, there have been several difficulties related to forced response analysis ever since, two of which are addressed in this thesis: efficient non-linear forced response analysis of mistuned bladed disks and mistuning identification. On the nonlinear analysis side, a new solution approach is proposed studying the combined effect of non-linearity and mistuning, which is relatively recent in this research area and generally conducted with methods whose convergence and accuracy depend highly on the number of degrees of freedom where non-linear elements are attached. The proposed approach predicts nonlinear forced response of mistuned bladed disk assemblies considering any type of nonlinearity. In this thesis, special attention is given to the friction contact modeling of bladed disks which is the most common type of nonlinearity found in bladed disk assemblies. In the modeling of frictional contact a friction element which enables normal load variation and separation of the contact interface in three-dimensional space is utilized. Moreover, the analysis is carried out in modal domain where the differential equations of motions are converted to a set of non-linear algebraic equations using harmonic balance method and modal superposition technique. Thus, the number of non-linear equations to be solved is independent of the number of non-linear elements used. On the mistuning identification side, a new method is enclosed herein which makes use of neural networks to assess unknown mistuning parameters of a given bladed disk assembly from its assembly modes, thus being suitable for integrally bladed disks. The method assumes that a tuned mathematical model of the rotor under consideration is readily available, which is always the case for today&rsquo / s realistic bladed disk assemblies. A data set of selected mode shapes and natural frequencies is created by a number of simulations performed by mistuning the tuned mathematical model randomly. A neural network created by considering the number of modes, is then trained with this data set for being used to identify mistuning of the rotor from measured data. On top of these, a new adaptive algorithm is developed for harmonic balance method, several intentional mistuning patterns are investigated via excessive Monte-Carlo simulations and a new approach to locate, classify and parametrically identify structural non-linearities is introduced.

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