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Minimizing rattle noises is becoming increasingly important for hybrid and electrical vehicles as masking from the internal combustion engine is missing and in view of the functional requirements of the office-like interiors of next generation automated vehicles. Rattle shall therefore be considered in the design phase of component systems. One hurdle is the modelling of the excitation mechanisms and its experimental validation. In this work we focus on excitation by loose parts having functional clearances such as gear systems or ball sensors in safety belt retractors. These parts are excited by relatively large low frequency displacements such as road-induced movements of the car body or low order rigid body engine vibrations generating multiple impacts with broad band frequency content. Direct measurement of the impact forces is in many cases not possible.

Elastohydrodynamic (EHD)-simulation is a widely applied simulation technique that is used in a very diverse field of applications ranging from the study of vibroacoustics to the calculation of friction power losses in lubricated contacts. In particular, but not limited to, the automotive industry, technical advances and new requirements put current EHD simulation methodology under test. Ongoing trends like downsizing, downspeeding, start-stop and the continuing demand for increasing fuel efficiency impose new demands and challenges also on the simulation methodology. Increasing computational capabilities enable new simulation opportunities on the other hand. In the following, an overview is given on the current state of the art and today’s challenges for the elastohydrodynamic simulation of journal bearings and their wide range of applications from highly loaded main bearings supporting the crank shaft in the ICE to high speed turbocharger bearings.

In the past the exterior and interior noise level of vehicles has been largely reduced to follow stricter legislation and due to the demand of the customers. As a consequence, the noise quality and no longer the noise level inside the vehicle plays a crucial role. For an economic development of new powertrains it is important to assess noise quality already in early development stages by the use of simulation. Recent progress in NVH simulation methods of powertrain and vehicle in time and frequency domain provides the basis to pre-calculated sound pressure signals at arbitrary positions in the car interior. Advanced simulation tools for elastic multi-body simulation and novel strategies to measure acoustical transfer paths are combined to achieve this goal. In order to evaluate the obtained sound impression a roughness prediction model has been developed. The proposed roughness model is a continuation of the model published by Hoeldrich and Pflueger.