Title: Performance improvement of passive suspension of vehicles using position dependent damping

Authors: Chandrashekhar S. Dharankar; Mahesh Kumar Hada; Sunil Chandel

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, AISSMS College of Engineering, Near RTO, Kennedy Road, Pune, 411001, India ' Armament Research Board, DRDO, HQRs, New Delhi, 11001, India ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Defence Institute of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Pune, 411025, India

Abstract: This paper presents the analysis of position dependent damping (PDD) and a methodology for estimation of its parameters for passive suspension of vehicles. The time domain simulation of a quarter-car model with non-linear PDD is performed over the generated random road profile for different forward speeds of vehicle. The time domain response is transformed to frequency domain power spectral density (PSD) and root mean square (RMS) response is determined. Also, the time domain simulation with half sine bump is performed to obtain the bump response spectrum to evaluate the performance of vehicle suspension to transient road excitation. The performance of passive suspension with PDD is compared with that of linear damping in terms of ride comfort, suspension travel and road holding ability. It is shown that the concept of PDD has potential to improve the performance of vehicle suspension by minimising the well-known ride-handling conflict associated with passive suspensions.

Keywords: performance improvement; passive suspension; vehicle; position dependent damping; PDD; quarter car; power spectral density; PSD; ISO spectral model; random road profile; time domain simulation; bump response spectrum; ride-handling conflict; RMS response.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVP.2018.088802

International Journal of Vehicle Performance, 2018 Vol.4 No.1, pp.89 - 111

Received: 25 Jan 2017
Accepted: 09 May 2017
Published online: 19 Dec 2017 *

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