Vehicle Ride Comfort and Stability Performance Evaluation

This paper presents a comprehensive testing of four different shock absorbers: three were passive and the other was readjust able to study their performance on vehicle ride and stability. For this purpose, a quarter vehicle model and a half vehicle model simulating vehicle suspension testing were devolved in non-dimensional form to study the effect of actual characteristics of shock absorbers on vehicle performance. The shock absorber characteristics were represented by the linear average value of shock absorber (both rebound and compression strokes), the linear rebound, and the compression strokes with different slopes and actual measurements characteristics. Also, a parametric study was carried out to study the effect of mass ratio and stiffness ratio on the vehicle performance. The mass ratio was defined as the ratio of the unsprung mass to the sprung mass while the stiffness ratio, was defined as the ratio of spring stiffness to tire stiffness.

The two models were numerically solved using ADAMS and the Matlab tool kit. The main output from this analysis was the response in terms of displacement, velocity, acceleration, and forces. These parameters were considered the measure of the stability and ride comfort.