Predicting the Vibration Characteristics of Antivibration Mounts Using the Finite Element Method

The resilient properties of antivibration mounts depend on the dynamic properties of the constituent viscoelastic materials of the mounts. These dynamic properties vary with frequency and temperature. Thus the use of frequency dependent parameters such as the complex Young's modulus is important. Several techniques have been developed to characterize the frequency dependent complex modulus of viscoelastic materials. In this paper, the forced nonresonance method is used to characterize the complex Young's modulus properties of the constituent viscoelastic material within a class of antivibration mounts used in marine vessels. The complex modulus properties are used jointly with the finite element method (FEM) to predict the transmissibility characteristics of the mounts. It is shown that these predictions correlate well with the experimentally determined vibration transmissibility characteristics of the mounts.