A Review of Automated Design Synthesis Approaches for Virtual Development of Ground Vehicle Suspensions

This paper outlines the state-of-the-art of approaches for automated design synthesis of ground vehicle suspensions. Conventionally, design synthesis of suspensions has been based on trial and error approaches, where designers iteratively change the values of design variables and reanalyze until acceptable performance criteria are achieved. This is time-consuming and tedious. With stringent requirements for vehicles, design synthesis undergoes fundamental changes. This puts much attention on the potentials of an automated process. This process is based on the following techniques: effective modelling and simulation methods, realistic formulation approaches, and appropriately selected optimization algorithms. These techniques are reviewed and an automated design synthesis methodology is briefly introduced.