Design Improvement on Condenser Assembly under Dynamic Behaviour through Vibro-Acoustic Analysis

The automotive air-conditioning (AC) components fitted on passenger car having high vibration make significant impact on vehicle noise and harshness inside the cabin. Hence, it is necessary to reduce the vibrations within the permissible limit. This can be done by improving dynamic behavior of the assembly under vehicle fitments. The present paper explains about design improvement carried out on the condenser assembly to increase strength of the mounting brackets as well as to reduce the noise level by reducing the vibrations. Modal frequency response analysis has been performed on the existing condenser and found that there was relatively high vibration on the assembly due to low stiffness of the bracket. From the acoustic analysis, it was observed that the noise is occurring due to high vibration at resonance condition. By doing the design changes on the assembly, modal frequency increased relatively. Accordingly, noise level also reduced. The Vibro-acoustic analysis predicted the noise level on the existing and modified condenser assembly. Therefore, unnecessary physical cycles of ‘modify-and-test’ would be avoided to save time and money. Ideally, it is intended to ‘get-first-time-right’.