Active mounts for marine application

The goal of the project was to develop active mounts to isolate the main diesel engine using piezoceramic actuators integrated in the load transmission of the common mounts. These mounts are to use high-frequency conducted adaptive countermeasures to reduce vibrations caused by the engine. Integrating the active mounts directly in the load transmission, which is a safety critical element, the system reliability of these mounts will face special challenges. Designing these active mounts several measures on the target ship have been done. Based on these measurements simulations of the dynamic behaviour of the ship, the passive mounts and the aggregate have been done to design the active mounts and to simulate its properties to optimise and to design e.g., the adaptive control in an early state of the project. For the experimental research a test rig with a reduced ship structure and the main diesel engine was build up to investigate the performance of the active mounts. Different controller strategies to reduce harmonic vibrations of the engine were tested as well as investigations due to aspects of the system reliability. After the laboratory test phase the mounts where implemented in the target ship and investigations of the performance tinder real environmental conditions where done.