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As engines become lighter and achieve higher output to meet carbon dioxide emissions targets, it becomes more challenging to design a crankshaft that is both lighter and capable of handling higher loads. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the characteristics of forces imposed on the crankshaft, and the mechanisms by which stresses are created in the crankshaft. This paper describes the characteristics of bending stresses measured on the rearmost crank pin fillet of a crankshaft. Two basic crankshaft resonant modes are described. Forward crankshaft whirl then has the effect of increasing the system natural frequencies by the stiffening effect, while reverse whirl reduces the system natural frequencies by the softening effect. The effect of whirl grows with increasing engine speed. This results in what appears to be four crankshaft natural frequencies rather than two. The four resonances appear at all non-zero engine speeds.