Design of Isolation Pulley in Front of Crankshaft to Reduce Vibrations of Front End Accessory Drive System

The driving pulley is often used as a Torsional Vibration Damper (TVD) for the crankshaft in the front end accessory drive (FEAD) system. Although the crankshaft torsional vibrations are dampened, they are transmitted to the belt transmission and therefore to the driven accessories. The isolation pulley is a new device to reduce the belt tension fluctuation by isolating the belt transmission from the crankshaft torsional vibrations. A five-pulley system with isolation pulley is presented and a non-linear model is established to predict the dynamic response of the pulleys, tensioner motion, tension fluctuation and slippage. The model works in the time domain with Runge-Kutta time-stepping algorithm. The numerical simulation results of harmonic excitations show that the amplitudes of the belt tension fluctuation and the vibrations of each component are reduced significantly. Moreover, the effect of isolation pulley parameters on the system natural frequencies is demonstrated. It is shown that natural frequency of the system is reduced by using lower stiffness and thus the crankshaft torsional vibrations are isolated.