MODELING THE AUTOMOTIVE ENGINE COMPONENTS WITH VISCOELASTIC GASKET ELEMENTS

The present paper presents a methodology to model the automotive engine components using newly developed viscoelastic gasket elements. The viscoelastic gasket element is one-dimensional element with load and deflection defined in the thickness direction only, thus has great computational efficiency. In addition, this element has the ability to incorporate the frequency-dependent viscoelastic properties of the materials and thus can be used to model the vibration and acoustic performance of the engines and subsystems. In the present study, an elastomer isolated engine cylinder-head cover assembly is modeled. The results obtained are consistent with the experimental measurements and with the work done earlier using viscoelastic shell elements.