Evaluation of damping characteristic and optimal design of cab’s hydraulic mount in soil compactor

The low damping characteristic in the rubber material of the cab’s rubber mount cannot improve the ride quality of the soil compactor’s cab. Thus, a hydraulic damper is proposed for the cab’s rubber mount (cab’s hydraulic mount) to improve the ride quality of the soil compactor’s cab. To enhance the efficiency of the cab’s hydraulic mount, the damping characteristics and design parameters of the hydraulic damper are analyzed and optimized based on the mathematical model of the soil compactor’s cab under various conditions. Some outstanding results of the study are found as follows: (1) With the hydraulic mount used, its nonlinear damping coefficient (c_d) needs to be designed in a range of 9.0 < c_d < 27.0 kNs²/m² to optimize the cab’s ride quality, especially at the optimal value of c_d = 18.0 kNs²/m². (2) The chamber’s radius and annular gap of the hydraulic damper greatly affect the c_d while its orifice’s number and radius insignificantly affect the c_d. To reach the optimal c_d, the annular gap should be reduced by 50% compared to the original design. (3) With the optimal c_d used, both the cab’s displacement and acceleration responses are greatly reduced under various excitations. Particularly, their root-mean-square values are greatly decreased by 31.34% and 75.68% compared without the value of c_d under the random excitation. Therefore, the ride quality of the soil compactor’s cab has been greatly improved.