Abstract
When a vibration source such as engines and motors is attached to a structure, rubber mounts are widely used to insulate the vibration. Stiffness and layout of the mounts are major factors which determine the performance of the vibration insulation. Thus many studies on optimum design of rubber mounts have been done. Most of them, however, optimize their stiffness and position for a given number of mounts. This study aims to develop an optimization method of rubber mount layout which determines the optimal number of mounts as well as their stiness and position. Here a method which is based on the idea of the exterior penalty function method is presented, and numerical examples of the optimization are given.
