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In automobile development, steering vibrations caused by engine excitation force and suspension vibration input from the road surface are a problem. The conventional method of reducing vibrations and thereby securing marketability has been to dispose a dynamic damper inside the steering wheel. The resonance frequency of a steering system varies for each vehicle developed (as a result of the vehicle size, the arrangement of the stiff members of the vehicle body, and the like). As a result, the individual values of dynamic dampers that are used with vehicles must be adjusted for each developed vehicle type. To address this problem, we have developed a new structure in which, rather than using a conventional dynamic damper, we disposed a floating bush on the Supplemental Restraint System (SRS) module attachment section and used the SRS module itself as the weight for the dynamic damper.

In order to efficiently enhance engine sound quality under acceleration, the authors have developed an evaluation method for primary judgment of the sound quality of engine combustion noise at the stage of advanced engine development before the prototype vehicle is built. This method is an application of an existing method for evaluating the sound quality of engine combustion noise in vehicle interiors to the evaluation of noise and vibration at an engine acoustic test bench. In this method, it is necessary to consider the air-borne and the structure-borne components separately. The analysis procedure for the air-borne component is as follows. First, the sound pressure at a point 1 m away from the engine and the in-cylinder pressure of each cylinder are measured simultaneously in a semi-anechoic engine dynamometer test chamber. Next, the signal correlated with engine combustion is extracted from the measured sound pressure using the time domain combustion noise separation method.