Title: Urban bus driver ride and road-friendliness. Part II: subjective suspension damping tuning and objective optimisation

Authors: Dongpu Cao; Subhash Rakheja; Zhanqi Wang

Addresses: Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR), University of Waterloo, Waterloo N2L 3G1, Canada. ' Concave Research Centre, Concordia University, Montreal H3G 1M8, Canada. ' Concave Research Centre, Concordia University, Montreal H3G 1M8, Canada

Abstract: Three-dimensional ride dynamic model of an urban bus, developed in first part of the study, is applied to determine desirable suspension damping through subjective tuning and objective parametric optimisation under a wide range of operating conditions, including vehicle speed, load, road roughness and tyre inflation pressure. While the subjective method relies on the motion perception of the experimenter, the objective approach is limited to performance measures considered in the optimisation problem. The results suggest that both the objective and subjective methods could yield enhanced driver ride and dynamic tyre loads over the most probable ranges of operating conditions when compared with the baseline dampers. The ride responses of the candidate bus equipped with subjectively tuned dampers were subsequently measured, which further demonstrated applicability of the model for suspension damping tuning for enhancing both the driver- and road-friendliness.

Keywords: suspension damping; damping asymmetry; sensitivity analysis; objective optimal damping; subjective damping tuning; dynamic modelling; performance evaluation; urban bus ride; urban buses; vehicle vibration; full-vehicle modelling; model validation; ride dynamics; road friendliness; operating parameters; suspension components; vehicle suspension; tyres; ride comfort; vehicle speed; tyre inflation pressure; vehicle load; road roughness; urban infrastructure; vehicle structure; vehicle safety; driver safety; roads; vehicle design.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVD.2011.045770

International Journal of Vehicle Design, 2011 Vol.57 No.4, pp.333 - 358

Received: 29 Mar 2010
Accepted: 24 Aug 2010
Published online: 15 Apr 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article