Automation of a Quarter-Car Suspension Test Bench

This paper aims to describe a quarter-car suspension test bench automation process to be utilized in an academic environment. The project is made up of pneumatic system modeling and control system design. An analysis of the bench’s pneumatic system is carried out. This pneumatic system is composed of a pneumatic actuator and a proportional directional control valve, which are responsible for generating the road profile. It is proposed a model to compensate the non-linearities present in the pneumatic system measurement process and the disturbances caused by the under test suspension system, as well as a control strategy for small displacements of the load through linear control approaches, which provide the necessary flexibility to directly influence the parameters affecting the dynamics of the excitation system platform’s displacement, thereby reducing the complexity of the controller design to be adopted. Furthermore, analyses are conducted on the effectiveness of the control in generating sinusoidal track profiles for a frequency range between 0 and 5 Hz, where the repeatability of this process and the safety of the electrical and mechanical components of the test bench are observed. Numerical results, obtained through the excitation system control of the quarter-car suspension test rig, have shown success in generating sinusoidal road profiles, which allows it to investigate and develop suspension systems based on the quarter-vehicle model.