Transverse hysteretic damping characteristics of a serpentine belt: Modeling and experimental investigation

In this paper, the transverse dynamic hysteretic damping characteristics (HDC) of a serpentine belt are investigated. The variable stiffness and variable damping model (VSDM) constituted of a variable-stiffness spring and a variable-damping damper is developed to estimate the HDC of the belt. A test rig is designed to test the force–displacement hysteresis damping curve and resonance frequencies of serpentine belts with different lengths under diverse loading conditions. The force–displacement hysteresis damping curve getting from the experiment is then used to determine the transverse stiffness and damping coefficients needed for the VSDM. The experiment particularly shows that the orientation of the hysteresis curve swings left and right around each natural frequency as it is a symmetrical point. This interesting phenomenon is explicated in detail with the loss angle which is calculated by two methods. Moreover, two sub-analytical models included in the VSDM are proposed to model the dependence of transverse dynamic stiffness and damping coefficient of a belt on belt length, pretension and excitation frequency. A comparison of the hysteresis curves obtained from the VSDM and experiment indicates that they are in good agreement.