Optimization of Damper Top Mount Characteristics for Semi-Active Suspension System

Semi-active suspension offers variety of damping force range which demands greater need to optimize the top mount to ensure multiple objectives of ride comfort, harshness and safety can be achieved. For this purpose, this paper proposes a numerical optimization procedure for improving the harshness performance of the vehicle through the adjustment of the damper top mount characteristics of the semi-active suspension system. The proposed optimization process employs a frequency dependent combined objective function based on ride comfort and harshness evaluation. A detailed and accurate damper top mount mathematical model is implemented inside a validated full vehicle model to provide a realistic simulation environment for the optimization study. The semi-active suspension system employs a Rule-Optimized Fuzzy-Logic controller. The ride comfort and harshness of the full vehicle are evaluated by analyzing the body acceleration in different frequency ranges. The dynamic stiffness of the damper top mount is used to describe the optimum damper top mount characteristics for different optimization case studies. The results show that, the proposed optimization routine enables - compensation of the harshness degradation in the semi-active suspension system by adjusting the characteristics of the damper top mount.