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Experimental Study on Source Identification of Bus 2014-01-0014

Floor's Vibration Published 04/01/2014

Changxin Wang
Jilin University

Deguang Fang and Fuxiang Guo

Nanjing IVECO

CITATION: Wang, C., Fang, D., and Guo, F., "Experimental Study on Source Identification of Bus Floor's Vibration," SAE
Technical Paper 2014-01-0014, 2014, doi:10.4271/2014-01-0014.
Copyright © 2014 SAE International

Abstract In the subjective evaluation process of a light bus's NVH

performance, it was found that the rear floor of the bus had
To find out the main excitation sources of a bus floor's
obvious vibration when the driving speed was in a certain
vibration, modal analysis and spectral analysis were
range. Even the passenger's feet felt numb. On this ground it is
respectively performed in the paper. First we tested the
necessary to carry out the vibration test of the bus floor and
vibration modal of the bus's floor under the full-load condition,
find out the root of the problem. However, leading to the bus
and the first ten natural frequencies and vibration modes were
floor's vibration, there may be many factors, for example, the
obtained for the source identification of the bus floor's vibration.
engine vibration, the vibration of the driveline, the vibration of
Second the vibration characteristic of the bus floor was
the exhaust pipe and the vibration from the wheel's unbalance.
measured in an on-road experiment. The acceleration sensors
These vibration could be transmitted to the vehicle's floor.
were arranged on the bus's floor and the possible excitation
When the exciting frequency of one excitation system is
sources of the bus, which includes engine mounting system,
consistent with one modal frequency of the bus's floor, the
driveline system, exhaust system, and wheels. Then the
resonance would occur. So we need to have a preliminary
on-road experiment was carefully conducted on a highway
understanding of the modal distribution of the bus's floor. The
under the four kinds of test condition: in-situ acceleration,
modal of the bus's floor was measured under the full-load
uniform velocity (90km/h, 100km/h, 110km/h, 120km/h),
condition. The acceleration sensors were respectively arranged
uniform acceleration with top gear, and stall sliding condition
at the bottom of the bus's floor, and the two vibration exciters
with neutral gear. After that, by performing order tracking
were used at the front and rear parts of the bus's floor. The
analysis and spectral analysis, the 1st order rotation frequency
main local modes of the bus's floor were obtained by the
of the driveline and the 2nd order frequency of engine were
testment. Then the on-road test was performed, and the
identified to be the main cause of bus floor's vibration. At last,
vibration signal of the possible excitation sources and the rear
the reasonable measures were proposed to reduce the
floor of the bus were measured. The methods of order
vibration of the bus's floor.
tracking[4, 5, 6] and spectrum analysis[7, 8, 9] were emploied
to find out the root of the vibration problem. At last the effective
Introduction and feasible solutions were accordingly proposed.
At present, NVH characteristic is an important index of
comprehensive evaluation of an automotive and it is also the Modal Test of the Bus Floor
key aspect of the automotive manufacturers for improving
The modal of vehicle body panel is inherent with the plate,
competitiveness. With the development of social production
which includes the natural frequencies and the corresponding
and the improvement of people's living level, the requirements
vibration modes. They are associated with the material and
of the vehicle comfort are also becoming higher. So at the
shape of the body parts, and they can reflect natural vibration
product development stage, NVH performance of a vehicle is
characteristic of the panels. There are several general methods
regarded as a major qualified indicator in the major car
of modal test. One is an impact method, which is used for the
companies all over the world[1, 2, 3].
small parts. It has many advantages, such as easy operation
and simpling, but also its some disadvantages are small
exciting force, single excitation frequency, and bad coherence
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of measuring points to incentive points. Another modal testing By performing analysis of the experimental data, the main
method is the exciter excitation method, which is often applied vibration mode of the bus's floor can be easily obtained in
to large vehicle parts's testment, such as the whole frame, LMS.Test.Lab software. Since the bus underbody's floor is
bus's white-body. Its advantages include stability, reliability, the fixed on the two long beams of the vehicle frame, and some
adjustable excitation frequency and good coherence. The other vehicle parts are also connected to the bus floor, so the
measured modal result of this method is accurate and reliable, main modes of the bus floor are influenced by these
but it needs the excitation instrument, and the testing components. The whole modal of the bus's floor doesn't (all)
arrangement is not convenient. appear and they are not the interested modals. Here the local
modal frequencies of the first ten orders of the bus floor are
Here we choosed the second method which emploied the MB shown in table 1.
Dynamic electromagnetic exciter and the LMS.Test.Lab system
to test the modal of the bus's floor. The acceleration signal was Table 1. experimental value of the modal frequency of the bus floor
measured using the vibration acceleration sensor of B&K
company. The arrangement position of the measured points is
as shown in figure 1. Because the rear bus's floor and the rear
frame are connected by bolts, and the bus floor is covered with
wood and rubber pad in the bus, so the acceleration sensors
were arranged at the bottom of the bus's floor. At the same
time in order to research the local modal of bus floor under the
full-load state, the components of the bus body do not have to
be removed. So the two middle vacant place of the figure 1 is
the wheel positions of the rear axle. The front two vacant
places are separately the place of tank and air-conditioning
parts. The front and rear positions of the vibration exciter are
also shown in the figure 2. The aim of this arrangement of the
exciters is to consider the energy transferring in the vertical
coordinate directions, and check conveniently the coherence.
Considering the bus floor in the constraint condition, the
vibration direction of the bus floor is mainly vertical, so the
excition direction of the exciter is vertical upward. Due to the
Experimental Method of the Bus Floor's
quantities limition of the sensors, the modal test needs many
times to be completed in batches.
Vibration
The Arrangement of the Acceleration Sensors
Usually there are many causes of the vehicle vibration,
especially the vibration of the bus's floor. For example, the
vibration of the engine, transmission shaft vibration, the
vibration of the exhaust pipe and the vibration caused by the
unbalance tyre, these sources are all likely to bring vibration to
the bus underbody's floor. In order to find out which system
causes the violent vibration of the inner rear floor of the bus,
which makes passengers very uncomfortable, we mainly tested
the vibration of the rear subregion of the bus's floor. The pasted
positions of the vibration acceleration sensors were shown in
figure 3. The bus floor's vibration signal was collected using
LMS Test Lab system.
Figure 1. The arrangement position of the measurement points on the
bus floor

Figure 2. The locations of the front and rear vibration exciters

Figure 3. The location of the acceleration sensors on the rear
subregion of the bus floor
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Meanwhile, in order to know about the vibration intensity of

every possible excitation source and vibration transferring
conditions, the signal of each vibration excitation source was
also measured. First, the engine vibration is one of the main
vehicle vibration sources, and the performance of the engine
mount system can directly reflect the level of the vehicle
vibration level. At the active and passive end of the engine
mounting system, the acceleration sensors were fixed as
shown in figure 4.
Figure 6. The location of the acceleration sensors on the rubber
hangers of the exhaust system

At last, in the upper and lower location of the front and rear
suspension were respectively arranged the acceleration
sensors. It is mainly to investigate the suspension's ability to
attenuate vibrations from the road surface and check whether
there is an unbalanced wheel vibration. The sensors'
arrangement are shown in figure 7 and 8.
Figure 4. The location of the acceleration sensor on the power
assembly mountings

we also know that the driveline vibration is mainly caused due

to the equivalent angle of the shafts, which also reflect the
vibration level of the driveline. While the transmission shafts
are connected to the bus frame through the shaft bracket fixed
to the frame beam and the bus body is connected to the bus
frame. Often the rubber bearings in the shaft brackets are used
to attenuate the vibration of the driveline. So it is necessary to Figure 7. The location of the acceleration sensors of the front
test the driveline vibration. The two acceleration sensors were suspension system
put at the passive end of the front and rear driving shaft
brackets, as shown in figure 5.

Figure 8. The location of the acceleration sensors of the rear

suspension system

Figure 5. The location of the acceleration sensors on the shaft bracket
of the transmission shaft
The vibration of the exhaust system is mainly caused by the
gas pressure fluctuations from the engine, and it is partily
passed by the vibration of the engine. Though its overall
vibration is small, but it has many rubber hangers of the
exhaust system. Here the vibration of the three main exhaust
suspension near the rear underbody floor were measured,
seeing figure 6.
Several Road Test Conditions
During the on-road experiment, we tend to let one subsystem
of the vehicle work or not work. Then by comparing the
changes of the vibration response in this two situtions, you can
judge whether it is the excitation source of vibration response
of the interested points. This is convenient to quickly find the
root of the problem. If the sweep-frequency of one excitation
source is near to the natural frequency of a particular part, then
the resonance could happen. The uniform acceleration process
of engine is a sweep excitation process. It is also convenient to
find the regularity of the problem. In this paper, the vibration
experiment of the bus's floor mainly included the following
driving conditions.
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1. On-highway driving at a uniform speed speed and statistical energy analysis, the common problems
In the subjective evaluation of the bus, it was found that could be got. In addition, we could use the sweeping method of
the rear floor of the bus vibrated violently when the driving the incentive frequency to motivate vibration of the bus floor.
speed was in the range of 90 to 120km/h. So here we The purpose of doing so is to judge that there is or not the
choosed the problem speed to measure the vibration of the existence of the resonance of the bus body system, and which
bus floor(90km/h, 100km/h, 110km/h and 120km/h). orders of system is major.
2. Uniformly accelerating condition with neutral gear
The calculation method of the engine excitation frequency is
It is a sweeping excitation process of the vibration of the
such as formula 1.
bus floor or other body parts from the only excitation source,
which is the engine.
3. On-highway uniform acceleration
In this actual working condition, the engine, driveline and (1)
wheels all work together. It is a sweeping excitation process
of the vibration of the bus underbody's floor or other body f is the excitation frequency; n is revolutions per minute, i is the
parts from the many excitations. Through the colormap of number of cylinders, τ is the number of stroke.
the interested point, it can be seen that the frequency of
one order is very obvious, thus the corresponding excitation The excitation calculation methodds of the driveline and wheels
source is main and its contribution to the vibration response are respectively such as formula 2 and formula 3.
is greater.
4. Stall sliding condition with neutral gear
It is also a sweeping excitation process of the vibration
of the bus floor or other body parts from the non-engine (2)
excitation, which are from driveline and wheels.

Experimental Results and Analysis

Aiming at the problems in the NVH subjective evaluation: when
the driving speed reached in the range of 90-120km/h, the
vibration of the rear floor of the bus will be great. We firstly
contrasted the overall vibration of different row on the bus floor.
Figure 9 is the comparison of the overall vibration of the rear
floor under the speed of 100km/h. It is clear that the vibration
of the fifth row floor of the bus is very greater than other rows'.
(3)
fd is the excitation frequency of the driveline; it is transmission
ratio; fw is the excitation frequency of the wheels; τ is the final
drive ratio of the vehicle.
Through transforming the bus floor's vibration signal from time
domaint into frequency domain under the uniform speed state,
the spectrum map of each measured point can be obtained in
the LMS software. The spectrum analysis of the measured
points of third row, fourth row and fifth row are respectively as
figure 10, 11, 12 and 13. The problem frequency at different
speeds could be found, as shown in table 2.

Figure 9. The overall vibration comparison of the different row position

In the time domain signal, we can only know the rule of

vibration intensity changing with time, but it can't be got which
vibration source is greatly associated with the vibration
response of the measured points. So it is required to transform
the time domain signal into frequency domain signal (FFT), Figure 10. The spectrum of three points at 90km/h
which is better for finding out the frequency of the main
vibration (namely the problem frequency). Then by comparing
the problems frequencies of different points with different
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Figure 11. The spectrum of three points at 100km/h
Figure 12. The spectrum of three points at 110km/h
Figure 13. The spectrum of three points at 120km/h
Table 2. the problem frequencies of the bus floor's vibration, the
frequencies of 2nd order of the engine and the frequencies of 1st order
of the driveline in the different driving speed.
From table 2, it can be easily seen that the problem frequencies
of rear row of the bus floor coincide with the ecitation
frequencies of the driveline 1st order(being equal to 1.28 order
of the engine) and the engine 2nd order. This phenomenon can
also be got from the measured colormap diagram under uniform
acceleration condition, as figure 14(here giving the fifth row
point-the problem point). So in the range of problem speed, the
1st order of transmission shaft and the 2nd order of engine are
considered to be the biggest contribution to the vibration
response of the bus floor. From the comparison of figure 10, 11,
12 and 13, We also find that the maximum peak vibration of fifth
rows is bigger than any other measured points, especially at the
speed of 100km/h. This is once again consistent with the
subjective assessment results. Therefore it is necessary to
optimize the the performance of the rubber bearings of
transmission shaft and engine mounting system.
Figure 14. The colormap of fifth row point
The vibration of the fifth row floor is the largest in the speed
100km/h. That is the main problem to be solved in this
experiment. Then we have studied the influence relationship of
each vibration source to the fifth row floor's vibration. The
correlation coefficients of each possible system point and the
fifth rows floor's vibration are as shown in table 3, from which we
can find the greatest impact source to the bus floor's vibration.
Table 3. The correlation coefficients of each source point and the
biggest vibration response point.
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From table 3, one can see that the correlation coefficient of the
driveline and the maximum vibration point are the biggest,
followed by the engine mount 1. The minimum influence
systems are the tyres and the exhaust system, and they are
negligible.
Finally, by comparison of acceleration spectrum of the rear bus
floor's points under stall sliding condition and uniformly
acceleration, we could get a resonance frequency band
(45Hz-60) of the bus floor, as shown in figure 15 and figure 16,
which coincides with the sixth, seventh and eighth modal
frequencies of the bus underbody's floor. Figure 17 is the
seventh modal of rear floor of the bus, and its modal frequency
is 52, 8Hz. This testifies that there is the existence of the bus
floor's resonance. Therefore, it is suggestion that the local
structure of the floor must be changed to adjust the local modal
of the bus underbody's floor without resonance.
Figure 15. The colormap of fifth row point under stall sliding condition
Figure 16. The colormap of fifth row point under uniform acceleratin
condition
Figure 17. The seventh modal of bus rear floor(52, 8Hz)
Conclusion
1. According to the experimental results, it was found that the
drive shaft vibration had the maximum effect on the vibration
of the rear floor of the bus. So it is suggestion to optimize
performance of the transmission shaft rubber bearings, for
preventing the drive shaft vibration transmitted to the bus
floor.
2. Through the constraint modal test of the bus floor, we
discovered that some modal frequencies of the bus floor
were low, and they partily coincided with the working
excitation frequency of the engine and the transmission
shaft. It is necessary to improve the modal of the bus floor,
to stagger resonance frequency.
3. The method of modal analysis and spectrum analysis can
be applied to quickly find the vibration root of vehicle's floor.
This method has instructive significance to solve practical
engineering problems, especially for the vibration resonance
of large vehicles and vehicles with multi-stage mounts.
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