4th International Conference on Sustainable Energy and Environmental Engineering (ICSEEE 2015)

Vibration Characteristics Analysis of Exhaust System Based on

Optimization of Hanger Position
GONGYu Pan1, a,DANQingCao2,b
1
School of Vehicle and traffic engineering ,Jiangsu University,Zhenjiang Xuefu Road No. 301,
Jiangsu,China
2
Full address of second author, including countrySchool of Vehicle and traffic engineering ,Jiangsu
University,Zhenjiang Xuefu Road No. 301, Jiangsu,China
a
[email protected], [email protected]

Keywords:Exhaust system；Free modes；Restrained modes；Optimization of the locations of

hangers；Reaction forces ofhangers
Abstract.To improve the performance of one exhaust system, in the article, a exhaust system in the
market was conducted by the stress analysis and optimization of the hanger. Firstly, the 3D model
was built by Catia and a FEM model was built by Hypermesh , and then the calculation of the free
modes were done by Anasys. After that, with the method of component mode synthesis and then
through the analysis by the software Nastran, the best hanger position was got. Finally, the optimized
system was conducted the restrained modes analysis, and the reaction force of hanger was calculated
as well,by verification and comparison, the modal mode of vibration is more appropriate,and the
peak of the force has decreased, in the low frequency section,the curve is more smooth,the
optimization was proved to be effective to improve the system’s NVH performance.

Introduction
Exhaust system needs to be paid attention to the following three aspects: (1)The first mode of bending
and torsion modal shape should be noticed (2) Free modal inherent frequency should be away from
engine idle ignition frequency (3) Under the engine vibration, hanging point force peak should not be
greater than the target value.
As the main vibration excitation source, Powertrain transmit the vibration to the exhaust system,
and then transmit it to the body through the hanging lug, if the lug position and its performance
matching is not good, it will lead to the vibrations of various parts of the body, and will affect the
comfort of the passengers. Therefore, the layout of the hanging lug is an important part of the design
of exhaust system.

Exhaust system model

The geometry of exhaust system
In this paper, a simplified model is established with CATIA of the manufacturer's drawings, including
the catalytic converter, the front and rear muffler, the exhaust gas turbine, the catalytic converter, and
the hanging lug. In the simplified model, the catalytic converter, the

brackets were ignored. The small impacts of the exhaust system on the mechanical structure were
ignored as well. The rams, the holes, as well as the screw nuts and some unimportant parts are also
ignored.

© 2016. The authors - Published by Atlantis Press 679

Figure 1.The 3d model.
The finite model
In the finite elements model, the shell element is used in the pipe and the muffler, and the method is
used during dealing it, which the mass point is to replace mass, then giving them the information
about the concentration of mass and the moment of inertia. The position of the concentrated mass
point is generally located in the center of mass, and the connecting pipe is connected with the
connecting pipe by RBE2 rigid unit. There is also a layer of heat shield on the catalytic converter, and
there are small holes in the heat shield, they are useless in the whole analysis, so they are ignored as
well.
The method when simplifying the corrugated pipe is to use a spring element and two mass points to
replace it, the spring stiffness is got by the experimental test, the quality of the two focus points are
got by measuring the quality of the corrugated pipe, the corrugated pipe connects with the exhaust
pipes in RBE2 rigid unit. After dividing each part, the RBE2 rigid element is used to connect each
part, and the welding connections between different departments are simulated by REB2 as well [1].
Figure 2 shows the finite element model after the division.

Figure 2.The finite elements model.

The Free Modal Calculation

The modal analysis is the key to the analysis of the exhaust system. The modes of the exhaust system
must be separated from the vibration frequencies of the engine and the vehicle body. Otherwise, once
the vibration frequencies are coupled, it will produce a stronger vibration.
The idle speed of engine is around the 650 rounds each minute. For the four cylinders engines, the
firing frequency should be greater than 20Hz, because the modes that are less than 20Hz are the rigid
modes, it is difficult to be excited, so they are not into consideration. In the design of the exhaust
system, the lower mode density it has, the better performance the exhaust system it has. So, after
calculation, there are in total 8 modes of the exhaust system in the range of 20~200Hz.

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 Table1. Natural frequency of the free modes.

Frequency Mode Frequency

Mode
/Hz /Hz
1 0 10 52.72
2 0 11 82.33
3 0 12 108.95
4 0.0019 13 120.39
5 0.0025 14 170.37
6 0.0063 15 174.20
7 18.37 16 211.62
8 23.18
9 47.97
As mentioned above, the idle speed is between 650-900r/min, the corresponding ignition
frequency is 21.7-30Hz. From the table 2 can be seen, the exhaust system has avoided the idling
frequency. According to the data provided by company, it just should be considered the vibration
frequency of the engine around 21.7Hz and 100Hz, which is possible to make the exhaust system
resonance, so that the vibration mode can be considered in the case of the position of the exhaust hook.
The vibration mode figures are as follows:

Figure 3 The 8th mode of the free modal

Figure 4 The 16th mode of the free modal

At low frequency section, the displacement of the first flange, the rear pipe and the muffer is
relatively greater, and the displacement of the rear muffer and rear pipe under the high frequency is
big. So when arranging the position of the suspensions, the vibration of the different modes should be
considered comprehensively, the position of the weighted sum of the vibration displacement should
be smaller.

The arrangement of hanger lug

Because of the engine vibration and exhaust excitation, the vibration of the exhaust system will be
transmitted to the body, which will increase the vibration of the body and increase the noise level of
the vehicle. The location of the suspension is directly influenced the vibration of the exhaust system.
Therefore, it is one of the key points for the design of the exhaust system to reasonably arrange the
suspension point.

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 After getting the results of the free modal, then the optimization of the positions of the hanger lug is
carried. In Nastran, the method of the comprehensive modal nodes to obtain a continuous Z numerical
table was used. The Z features are normalized to the feature vector and the smaller point is the
potential lifting lug.

Integrated modal node method

This method only analyzes the position of the suspension point from the point of view of modal
vibration mode. It is not the only method to determine the position of the lug. In this method, the
vertical vibration of the exhaust system is the most influential to the body vibration and vehicle noise.
In this paper, the coordinates of the X direction are from the front to the rear of the car, the Y
coordinates are from the driver to the passenger's direction, the Z coordinates from the bottom to the
top.
The theoretical basis is, for the exhaust system, a certain point normalizes Z direction of the vibration
displacement the Ai, in the frequency range of interest. If the exhaust system has m level modes, then
the Z generalized vibration displacement is
As= ∑ ( Ai ) （i=1,2,…,m）
2
(1)
In the design of the suspension point position of the exhaust system, the optimum suspension point is
given by the minimum of Ai value.

The lug position optimization

In Z axis, the output point sequence is selected from the X axis of the exhaust system to the upper
surface by NASTRAN, and the output point beginning is 1, the gap is 1mm, the gap of two nodes is
approximately 100mm, and the output points are selected to be the point sequences.
Then finding out square of the Z eigenvector, and then divided by the number that is maximum
value of the square of Z axis to do the normalization. The Zs is the sum of the squares of the Z axis
feature vector after the normalization. In Excel, output sequences in ascending, as figure5, after
getting the corresponding points of Z axis feature vector, comparing the sum of the squares Zs', in the
curve of the wave, the lowest is installed with an exhaust system suspension point position. As shown
in Figure 5, the nodes are 4, 21, 28, 35, 43, 47 and 53.
16
The sum of Z axis eigenvector

14
12
10
（mm²）

8
6
4
2
0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61
Sequence dots
Figure 5 Potential lug positions
Lug position is not only to consider this aspect, but also needs to consider the interference and other
issues. Because the point 11 is located in the corrugated pipe, so selecting the 21,28, 35,43,47,53 as
the hanging point. The following diagram shows a schematic diagram of the improved hanging ear
position.

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 Figure 6 Schematic figure of hanging positions

Restrained modal analysis

After the work of arranging hanging ear position, compared with the free modal analysis, firstly
seeing whether the system avoid the idle speed and the economic speed frequency. Idle speed is
650r/min, the economic speed is 3000r/min, the excitation frequency is 21.7Hz and 100Hz.Analysis
of the constraint mode results are shown in Table2.
Table 2Natural frequency of the restrained modes

Frequency Frenquancy
Mode Mode
/Hz /Hz

1 4.65 9 60.06

2 5.12 10 64.09
3 9.21 11 83.68

4 14.00 12 88.55

5 16.95 13 113.70

6 18.70 14 117.40

7 32.75 15 143.00

8 35.72 16 192.80

According to the above table, we can see that after the exhaust system added the hanging lug
avoided the vibration frequency of the engine, and the optimization is basically effective.
Compared with the former model, the new arranged exhaust system has the retrained modal
vibration figures which lead to less displacement.

Figure 7 The12th mode of restrained modal without optimization

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Figure 8 The 11th mode of restrained modal after optimization

The statics and dynamics analysis of exhaust system

The reaction force of the lifting lug is extracted from the Ansys, and the amount of the forces of the
original model lifting ear 1 to 5 is 28.978N, 57.106N, 60.311N, 26.469N, 45.992N.After the
suspension point position optimization of the hanging ear, the forces of NO1 to 5 ears are 30.125N,
34.354N, 25.761N, 39.051N, 37.12N, we can know that in the original model, reaction forces are in a
large difference, the pre-load distribution is not uniform, which is needed to optimize the layout.
After the suspension point rearrangement of the suspension, the maximum difference is 8.926N
among the ears, and the distribution is more uniform. The constraint reaction of the lifting lug is
calculated as follows, as shown in Figure 10, before the optimization, among the 1-5 hanging ears, the
fourth lifting ear dynamic reaction force peak is 51.3 N, and before 20Hz the dynamic force of the ear
is greater than 10N.
This process is from the start the idle speed, the impact of the vibration characteristics of the
vehicle is obvious, the maximum value of the anti-force is near the 20Hz, the idle frequency is getting
very close, but with the modal frequency lifting, the anti-force amplitude are reduced to 10N. In
addition, the reaction force of the curve has many peaks and the curve is not smooth. When the
position is optimized, the peak value of the dynamic reaction force at the fourth hanging ear is 49.1N,
and all the final reaction forces are reduced to 5N, and the reaction force curve becomes more
uniform.

Figure 10 The reaction force of hanger before optimization

Figure 11 The reaction force of hanger after optimization

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Conclusion
First of all, in this article, mainly the vibration characteristics were analyzed with modal analysis
method. And the using modal synthesis node method to do the hanger point position optimization,
after the constrained modal analysis, by comparing the curves of reaction forces before and after
optimization ,verifying the move to improve some exhaust system NVH performance is effective.

References
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