• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.141-155
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• 2019

This work evaluates the influence of negative stiffness on the performances of various vehicle suspension systems, and proposes a re-centering negative stiffness device (NSD). The re-centering NSD consists of a passive magnetic negative stiffness spring and a positioning shaft with a re-centering function. The former produces negative stiffness control forces, and the latter prevents the amplification of static spring deflection. The numerical simulations reveal that negative stiffness can improve the ride comfort of a vehicle without affecting its road holding abilities for either passive or semi-active suspension systems. In general, the improvement degree of ride comfort increases as negative stiffness increases. For passive suspension system, negative stiffness brings in negative stiffness feature in the control forces, which is helpful for the ride comfort of a vehicle. For semi-active suspensions, negative stiffness can alleviate the impact of clipped damping in semi-active dampers, and thus the ride comfort of a vehicle can be improved.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1994.10a
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• pp.938-944
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• 1994

Active damping has been shown to offer increased suspension performance in terms of vehicle isolation, suspension packaging, and road-tire contract force. Many semi-active damping strategies have been introduced to approximate the response of active damping with the modulation of passive damping parameters. This study investigates the characteristics of semi-active suspension control through the simulation of passive, skyhook active, and semi-active damping models. A quarter car model is studied with the conrolled damping replacing both passive and active damping. A new semi-active scheme is suggested to eliminate the abrupt changes in semi-active damping force. It is shown that the new strategy performs almost identically to the so called "force controlled" semi-active law without steep changes in damping force or body acceleration.eleration.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.1-9
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• 2012

The NCF control algorithm for an active suspension system was proposed and investigated. The NCF algorithm using spring dynamic variation force and suspension relative velocity was applied to the 1/4 vehicle model and numerical analysis was performed. Vehicle's performances such as vehicle displacement, vehicle acceleration, suspension deflection, tire deflection and absorbed power were calculated and compared with those of the passive, semi-active and LQR active suspension system that use full state feedback. Numerical results show that the proposed NCF active suspension system has superior performance compared with the passive and semi-active suspension system and has very similar performance compared with the LQR active suspension system. So the proposed NCF algorithm is considered as a highly practical algorithm because it requires only one displacement sensor in a 1/4 vehicle model.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.49 no.3
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• pp.329-353
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• 2014

Increasing usage of tank cars and their intrinsic instability due to sloshing of contents have caused growing maintenance costs as well as more frequent hazards and defects like derailment and fatigue of bogies and axels. Therefore, varieties of passive solutions have been represented to improve dynamical parameters. In this task, assuming 22 degrees of freedom, dynamic analysis of partially filled tank car traveling on a curved track is investigated. In order to consider stochastic geometry of track; irregularities have been derived randomly by Mont Carlo method. More over the fluid tank model with 1 degree of freedom is also presented by equivalent mechanical approach in terms of pendulum. An active suspension system for described car is designed by using linear quadratic optimal control theory to decrease destructive effects of fluid sloshing. Eventually, the performance of the active suspension system has been compared with that of the passive one and a study is carried out on how active suspension may affect the dynamical parameters such as displacements and Nadal's derailment index.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.5
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• pp.407-422
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• 2002

Passive control of the flutter condition of suspension bridges using a combined vertical and torsional tuned mass damper (TMD) system is presented. The proposed TMD system has two degrees of freedom, which are tuned close to the frequencies corresponding to vertical and torsional symmetric modes of the bridge which get coupled during flutter. The bridge-TMD system is analyzed for finding critical wind speed for flutter using a finite element approach. Thomas Suspension Bridge is analyzed as an illustrative example. The effectiveness of the TMD system in increasing the critical flutter speed of the bridge is investigated through a parametric study. The results of the parametric study led to the optimization of some important parameters such as mass ratio, TMD damping ratio, tuning frequency, and number of TMD systems which provide maximum critical flutter wind speed of the suspension bridge.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Technology Engineers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.683-690
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• 2012

In this work, the semi-active control of a large-sized bus suspension system with an MR damper was studied. An MR damper model that can aptly describe the hysteretic characteristics of an MR damper was adopted. Parameter values of the MR damper model were suitably modified by considering the maximum damping force of a passive damper used in the suspension system of a real large-sized bus. In addition, a fuzzy logic controller was developed for semi-active control of a suspension system with an MR damper. The vertical acceleration at the attachment point of the MR damper and the relative velocity between sprung and unsprung masses were used as input variables, while voltage was used as the output variable. Straight-ahead driving simulations were performed on a road with a random road profile and on a flat road with a bump. In straight-ahead driving simulations, the vertical acceleration and pitch angle were measured to compare the riding performance of a suspension system with a passive damper with that of a suspension with an MR damper. In addition, a single lane change simulation was performed. In the simulation, the lateral acceleration and roll angle were measured in order to compare the handling performance of a suspension system using a passive damper with that of a suspension system using an MR damper.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.30 no.10
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• pp.1051-1059
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• 2013

In general, lateral ride comfort of railway vehicle is mainly influenced by a secondary suspension placed between the bogie and carbody. Higher operating speeds of train results in increased vibration of carbody, which has a negative impact related to the ride comfort. To solve this problem, researches to replace the conventional passive suspension with (semi)active technology in the secondary suspension of a railway vehicle have been carried out. The semi-active suspension using the magneto-rheological damper is relatively simpler system and has advantage in maintenance compared to the hydraulic type semi-active damper. This study was performed to reduce lateral vibration acceleration of carbody related to ride comfort of railway vehicles with a semi-active suspension system. The numerical analysis was conducted by replacing passive lateral damper with semi-active MR damper, and robust control with the MR damper was applied to the 1/5 scaled railway vehicle model.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-20
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• 2014

Modern design of long suspension bridges must satisfy at the same time spanning very long distances and limiting their response against several external loads, even if of high intensity. Structural Control, with the solutions it provides, can offer a reliable contribution to limit internal forces and deformations in structural elements when extreme events occur. This positive aspect is very interesting when the dimensions of the structure are large. Herein, an updated numerical model of an existing suspension bridge is developed in a commercial finite element work frame, starting from original data. This model is used to reevaluate an optimization procedure for a passive control strategy, already proven effective with a simplified model of the buffeting wind forces. Such optimization procedure, previously implemented with a quasi-steady model of the buffeting excitation, is here reevaluated adopting a more refined version of the wind-structure interaction forces in which wind actions are applied on the towers and the cables considering drag forces only. For the deck a more refined formulation, based on the use of indicial functions, is adopted to reflect coupling with the bridge orientation and motion. It is shown that there is no variation of the previously identified optimal passive configuration.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Automotive Engineers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.100-107
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• 2001

The main goals of the automotive suspension systems are to isolate roadway unevenness from the tire and to improve vehicle stability. To overcome the performance limitation of the passive systems the active systems which completely replace the passive spring and damper elements with a force generating actuator has been studied. However, application of the system has been limited because it has required a significant amount of power. Recently, alternative systems which retain passive elements but include active elements have been developed to reduce the power required. Those systems are mostly focused on the control system which compresses the spring-damper directly. In this study, a new type of power efficient control system which makes the spring-damper unit slide in side way is studied. After constructing the control system including dynamic modeling and motion control, two types of alternative control systems are compared in view of power consumption and dynamic attitudes such as roll responses as well as heave responses. Also, a half car bond graph model is developed to show clearly the significant differences in performances between two control systems.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.17-23
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• 2004

The semi-active suspension system is getting widely adopted in passenger vehicles for its ability to improve ride comfort over the passive suspension system while not degrading driving safety. A key to the success is to develop practical controllers that yield performance enhancement over the passive damper under various driving conditions. To this end, several control strategies have been studied and evaluated in this research in consideration of practical aspects such as nonlinearity and dynamics of the damper. From simulation results. it has been observed that, with the proposed control schemes, ride comfort can be significantly upgraded while suppressing degradation of driving safety.