Title: Predicting noise, vibration and harshness performance degradation through fatigue analysis

Authors: Abdallah A. Abdallah, Kai Yang

Addresses: School of Technological Sciences, Department of Industrial Engineering, German Jordanian University, PO Box 35247, Amman 11180, Jordan. ' Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Wayne State University, 4815 4th Street, Detroit, MI 48202, USA

Abstract: Vehicle performance from a noise, vibration and harshness (NVH) perspective is typically evaluated at zero mileage. As the vehicle accumulates miles, systems that are considered as NVH sources and systems that are part of a noise and vibration path tend to see some degradation due to loosened joints, burnished gears, burnished bearings, etc. Up to date, efforts made to understand and predict NVH performance degradation are very limited. NVH degradation is not usually caused by a hard failure, such as cracks or bends; it is rather produced by fatigue degradation. In this work, we review the main literature written in the area of reliability performance degradation caused by fatigue. We evaluate how the same methods can be used for NVH degradation evaluation. We also introduce a new method to evaluate NVH degradation through damage analysis based on bench testing and stress-life curves.

Keywords: data acquisition; degradation analysis; fatigue analysis; NVH degradation; vehicle noise; vehicle vibration; harshness; reliability analysis; road load data; S-N curves; stress-life curve.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVNV.2008.024340

International Journal of Vehicle Noise and Vibration, 2008 Vol.4 No.4, pp.269 - 284

Published online: 01 Apr 2009 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article