Investigation of the Influence of an Hydraulically Interconnected Suspension (HIS) on Steady-State Cornering

This paper introduces a vehicle model in CarSim, and replaces a portion of its standard suspension system with an HIS model built in an external software to implement co-simulations. The maneuver we employ to characterize the HIS vehicle is a constant radius method, i.e. observing the vehicle’s steering wheel angle by fixing its cornering radius and gradually increasing its longitudinal speed. The principles of the influence of HIS systems on cornering mainly focus on two factors: lateral load transfer and roll steer effect. The concept of the front lateral load transfer occupancy ratio (FLTOR) is proposed to evaluate the proportions of lateral load transfer at front and rear axles. The relationship between toe and suspension compression is dismissed firstly to demonstrate the effects of lateral load transfer and then introduced to illustrate the effects of roll motion on cornering. The simulation results demonstrate that the design parameters of HIS systems including fluid cylinders’ cross-sectional area, system static pressure and accumulators’ volume can affect the cornering property and the corresponding simulation results of FLTORs and roll angles are also exhibited to discuss the principles of these effects.