Optimal Parameters Identification of Quarter Car Simulink Model for Better Ride Comfort and Road Holding

Abstract

Advancement in vehicle technology has explored many possibilities for improvement, keeping customer satisfaction in mind. One major criterion which a passenger always wishes to possess is ride comfort. But the suspension parameters suitable for a good ride comfort may not support another salient feature called road holding. Hence, in this work an attempt has been made to simultaneously improve the ride comfort and road holding, using a quarter car test model using MATLAB Simulink for a commercial light motor vehicle. Initially, a commercially available passive damper of light motor vehicle has been characterized using dynamic testing machine (DTM) in order to obtain its force–displacement behavior and damping nature. A design of experiment (DOE) has been conducted by taking vehicle velocity, sprung mass, spring stiffness and damping coefficient into consideration, for experimentation using quarter car model. Regression equations have been extracted for relating the problem parameters to both ride comfort and road holding. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) has been used to know the influence of each parameter toward the target response. In the later stage, response surface methodology optimization technique has been used in order to optimize the parameters for better ride comfort and road holding. Optimized parameters are substituted again in the quarter car model, to validate the results obtained during optimization. The present work concluded with an optimal ride comfort and road holding and proved the effectiveness of optimization technique in achieving so. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.