Free Vibration of Serpentine Belt Drive Systems

The vibration of an automotive serpentine belt drive system greatly affects the perceived quality and the reliability of the system. Accessory drives with unfavorable vibration characteristics transmit excessive noise and vibration to other vehicle structures, to the vehicle occupants, and may also promote the fatigue and failure of system components. Moreover, these characteristics are a consequence of decisions made early on in the design and arrangement of the accessory drive system. The present paper focuses on fundamental modeling issues that are central to predicting accessory drive vibration. To this end, a prototypical drive is evaluated, which is composed of a driven pulley, a driving pulley, and a dynamic tensioner. The coupled equations of free response governing the discrete and continuous elements are presented herein. A closed-form solution method is used to evaluate the natural frequencies and modeshapes. Attention focuses on a key linear mechanism that couples tensioner arm rotation and transverse vibration of the adjacent belt spans. Modal tests on an experimental drive confirm the theoretical predictions.