Development of Virtual Testing of EGR Coolant Rail

Vibration testing is carried out as part of the sign-off procedure for vehicle body and power unit mounted components to ensure that the components can survive their working life without damage. The paper describes the development of numerical techniques to replicate the vibration testing of a Diesel Engine EGR Coolant Rail. A Finite element (FE) model of the coolant rail was developed and validated. Subsequently, detailed FE models of the rubber hoses were developed and added to the coolant rail model in order to carry out a forced response analysis of the structure. Results from physical tests of the structure showed good agreement with the simulation results. A method is proposed for including the effect of the rubber hoses in the FE models of body and power unit mounted components using spring-dashpot elements. This is to avoid modelling the hoses in detail with resultant savings in computational costs.