International Conference on Engineering Vibration, Sofia, Bulgaria, International Conference on Engineering Vibration 2017

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ON THE RETROFITTING OF PASSIVE SUSPENSIONS FOR ROAD VEHICLES
Marco Claudio De Simone, Zandra B. R. Chavez, Domenico Guida

Last modified: 2017-05-18

Abstract


This work analyzes the use of an electro-mechanical device to be applied to a passive suspension system to improve performance
in terms of comfort, handling and safety [Tseng and Hrovat, 2015, Sharp, 1998]. It is well known that active suspension allow the
best performance in terms of road holding and comfort [Sharp and Peng, 2011, Tseng and Hrovat, 2015] while variable geometry
suspension (VGS), represent a good compromise between the performance of the semi-active and passive suspensions and the
disadvantages of active suspensions [Arana et al., 2015] The overall goal is to achieve a variable geometry suspension system,
of simple construction, small in size, which requires a reduced energy for its implementation, and that is installable without
substantial changes to the original passive suspension system through retrofitting operations. The device will be applied to a
vehicle whose geometries are inspired by XRAY T4 touring car platform. The kinematics of the system is analyzed by using
Lotus Suspension Analysis (LSA) software, while the multi-body model of the vehicles has been realized in SimScape. The
control law, of the retrofitted suspension system, is based on a hierarchical structure, having to guarantee, the mitigation of the
vibration of the chassis, not compromising the stability of the vehicle for the different trajectories.