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With the advent of cars with computerized engines, drivers sometimes suffer discomfort with “check engine” light problem, and as a result, insist on increasing levels of reliability in their cars. Hence, reliability of the wiring harness has become a very important automotive design characteristic. On one hand, the more secure an engine mounting system is, the more stable the engine wiring harness is. In order to enhance their durability, car manufacturers need to perform many validation tests during the development phase which involves a lot of time and cost. In this study, a newly developed lab-simulation test is proposed to qualify the design of engine mounting and engine wiring early in the design cycle and reduce time and expense. The lab-simulation test has contributed to a significant cost and time reduction and has shown good correlation to the original proving ground test.

The vehicle elastomeric components such as engine mounts could be aged and degraded by environmental loads such as thermal and mechanical loads during long term usage by customers. These make the degradation of vehicle driving performance comparing with a new condition. In this study, the main cause of NVH (Noise, Vibration and Harshness) degradation of a used vehicle was analyzed. It could be identified by the analysis of vibration insulating property changes of elastomeric components. The properties changes of aged engine mounts were analyzed and compared with initial properties. The accelerated laboratory ageing test mode was developed for simulating the degradation of engine mounts by thermal load analysis. Moreover, parametric studies were carried out to identify the robust engineering design technique. The engineering design parameters of elastomers such as volume, thickness and mechanical loading types were identified to improve the degradation phenomenon.