Study of the dynamic behaviour of a diesel powertrain for heavy trucks

Over the past few years, the improvement of the performance of diesel engines and their power trains have obtained considerable attention. The reduction of the masses and the dissipations tends to have an unfavorable influence on the dynamic behaviour of the system. In general, the system exhibits a complex dynamic behaviour which is hard to analyse on basis of measurements only. Most likely, such an experimental design of a prototype will involve much time and money. Therefore, numerical models have been developed in order to guide and optimize the design phase. The work presented in this paper has been carried out in cooperation with the company Renault Vehicules Industrielles. The main goal of this work was to analyse the (undesired) vibrations caused by the power train of a truck. The results of this analysis are used to verify the correctness of the currently used solution and to test solutions on other power trains showing similar vibration problems