Active and Passive Suspension System Performance under Random Road Profile Excitations

Passive suspensions are designed to satisfy the conflicting criteria of riding comfort and vehicle handling. An active suspension system attempts to overcome these compromises to provide the best performance for vehicle control. Different types of mathematical models have been used to study the suspension system of a vehicle. The quarter vehicle model is used for initial investigation. Later, the half vehicle and full vehicle models are used for the study, which is closer to the actual model of a vehicle suspension. In this paper, the behavior of a suspension system is analyzed using the full vehicle model. In the current work, the dynamic equation and their state-space formulation are presented for the full vehicle model to understand the system prior to the controller design. The open-loop response of the full vehicle suspension system, when subjected to various road excitations, is also studied. The procedure of modeling a SIMULINK model for passive suspensions system is discussed in detail. Design of the simple Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) feedback and feed-forward controller is presented for the active suspension system using transfer functions. Closed-loop transfer functions are also derived and their responses are plotted. To analyze the rollover behavior simulation for cornering is also performed in the current study.

Ride comfort control of in-wheel motor drive unmanned ground vehicles with energy regeneration

Adopting in-wheel motor drive can improve vehicle dynamics control functions, which is the most ideal drive mode of unmanned ground vehicle. However, with the increase of the heavy unspring-mass vibration energy while the vehicle running on uneven road, the ride comfort will be seriously deteriorated. To solve the problem and save energy, the ride comfort control based on regenerative suspensions is adopted. By analyzing the vibration performance, the adverse effects of the vehicle equipped in-wheel motors with passive suspensions are revealed. Then, the dynamics model of the regenerative suspension is built. Based on the suspension power recovery, the multi-state optimal control strategy for improving the ride comfort is designed. Finally, comparing the simulation results of regenerative suspensions with the test results of passive suspensions, when the vehicle mass ratio decreases from 8:1 to 4:1, the body acceleration and the root mean square value of tire dynamic load increase by 28.1% and 31.6%, correspondingly. With the control method, the body acceleration is decreased by 23% and reaches the level of conventional vehicles. Furthermore, part of the vehicle vibration energy can be recovered and the vehicle driving range can be extended.

Low-Complexity Passive Vehicle Suspension Design Based on Element-Number-Restricted Networks and Low-Order Admittance Networks

This paper is concerned with the low-complexity passive suspension design problem, aiming at improving vehicle performance in the meanwhile maintaining simplicity in structure for passive suspensions. Two methods are employed to construct the low-complexity passive suspensions. Using the first method, the number of each element is restricted to one, and the performance for all networks with one inerter, one damper, and one spring is evaluated, where best configurations for different vehicle settings are identified. Using the second method, low-order admittance networks whose orders of admittance functions are no larger than three are utilized. Design methods are proposed by directly using the positive realness conditions imposed on the admittance functions. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is numerically demonstrated, and the comparison between these two constructing methods is conducted.

Effective viscosity of puller-like microswimmers: a renormalization approach

Effective viscosity (EV) of suspensions of puller-like microswimmers (pullers), for example Chlamydamonas algae, is difficult to measure or simulate for all swimmer concentrations. Although there are good reasons to expect that the EV of pullers is similar to that of passive suspensions, analytical determination of the passive EV for all concentrations remains unsatisfactory. At the same time, the EV of bacterial suspensions is closely linked to collective motion in these systems and is biologically significant. We develop an approach for determining analytical EV estimates at all concentrations for suspensions of pullers as well as for passive suspensions. The proposed methods are based on the ideas of renormalization group (RG) theory and construct the EV formula based on the known asymptotics for small concentrations and near the critical point (i.e. approaching dense packing). For passive suspensions, the method is verified by comparison against known theoretical results. We find that the method performs much better than an earlier RG-based technique. For pullers, the validation is done by comparing them to experiments conducted on Chlamydamonas suspensions.