Abstract
Suspension systems fitted on modern commercial passenger vehicles are not only required to absorb vibrations caused by uneven road condition for ride comfort, but also to provide sufficient roll control to avoid dangerous roll-over and good traction when cornering. This creates a challenge in vehicle suspension design - the suspension system should provide both a soft response when it encounters road excitation, but also a hard response to roll motions. Passive hydraulically interconnected suspension (HIS) had been shown to have positive effects in solving this problem in previous studies. However, attempts to modify HIS layout designs to improve performance are mostly based on arbitrary modifications to the layout. Therefore, in this study, a systematic HIS design approach is proposed to improve the efficiency in exploring and identifying beneficial HIS layouts.Based on these promising results, experiments were carried out to verify the
pressure responses of some of the designed components, including a U-turn pipe, an orifice, an accumulator and the L4 sub-assembly - note that the testing itself was conducted by our industrial partner. Prototypes of these designed components were manufactured and tested under various input displacement signals. In addition, corresponding Amesim models were constructed for each test rig, and simulated pressure responses were compared with the experimental results to examine the reliability of the HIS Amesim model. Experimental and simulated responses had good agreement for all tested prototypes. This not only validated the proposed design approach for HIS system layout design, but also boosted confidence in converting the designed HIS models into real commercial products.
| Date of Award | 3 Oct 2023 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Jason Zheng Jiang (Supervisor), Branislav Titurus (Supervisor) & Simon Brown (Supervisor) |