The main purpose of this research is to reduce the transmitted engine vibration to the subframe structure via improving the mobility of engine mountings. In fact, the main focus is on the geometry optimization of the subframe part, implementing the design of experiments method, to increase the dynamic stiffness of the part to reduce the vibration transfer function in the mountings location.
In order to perform the optimization process, the front end model of the reference vehicle including the suspension, steering system, engine and deriveline system is generated in FE software. According to the prevalent guidelines, the mobility of engine mountings should be greater than target value which is usually obtained through benchmarking. To do so, some structural parameters that are apt to influence on the mobility function, e.g the section of subframe, thickness of subframe and vehicle body are selected as design variables for doing the design of experiments analysis. On the basis of that, the dominant design variables are introduced to the RSM method to reach the optimum case.