ADAPTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEM

SEMINAR REPORT
Submitted by

VIVEK ANILKUMAR
TKM15ME141

to
APJ Abdul Kalam Technological University
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of B.Tech Degree
in Mechanical Engineering

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 ABSTRACT
With the advancement of technology the importance of ride comfort is now a key factor in
every automobile vehicle being developed.Now the objective is to develop and remodel a
suspension system that would not only improve comfort characteristics but also improve the
safety aspects on a real time basis.Controlling the parameters like camber angle,toe angle and
wheel travel using actuation systems coupled with a electromechanical systems to improve
maneuverability is the present scope.However improving the detection capacity of the active
system can be analysed by varying the parameters like steering geometry, Tire Pressure,
Damping Coefficient(cs), Spring Stiffness (ks), Sprung Mass(m), Camber (cma), Toe(toe),
Wheel Speed(N) with the help of virtual dynamic model developed from Adams software and
analysis softwares like Minitab16,Solidworks,Matlab.This process is carried out on a
hydraulic test rig with a quarter car model as subject of study. Latest development and
application of this was a “ two wheeled scooter” with roll bar, restraint system and front crash
box for safety and comfort improvement.Nevertheless limited Autonomy and high cost limit
their diffusion.

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 CONTENT
Title Page Number

CHAPTER 1: Introduction 4

CHAPTER 2: Parameters and Systems 5

CHAPTER 3: Active Suspension System and Design 6

CHAPTER 4: Advantages of Double Wishbone 7

CHAPTER 5: Design Of Experiments 8

5.1: Data Assimilation 9
5.2: Regression Analysis 9
5.3: Analysis of Variance 11
5.4: Regression Model 12

CHAPTER 6: Parametric Analysis 13

6.1: Static Test 13
6.2: Dynamic Test 14

CHAPTER 7: Simulation 16

CHAPTER 8: Applications of Adaptive Suspension System 18

CHAPTER 9: Conclusion 20

REFERENCES 21

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Automobiles were initially developed as self-propelled versions of horse-drawn vehicles as
the era of industrialization developed the first workable spring-suspension system was
developed by Obadiah Elliott .His research registered a spring suspension system wheel with
two durable steel leaf springs on each side and the body of the carriage fixed directly to the
springs .The suspension system is an integral unit responsible for maintaining the stability of
a motorvehicle under static and dynamic conditions.Absorbing road shocks,vibrations,
keeping the passenger cabin secluded are its important functions.If such a system is not
present, the vibrations and shocks would be directly transferred to the steering, thereby
making it extremely hard to control the vehicle.Due to dynamic terrain conditions like uneven
road surface, rolling, pitching, yawing, vehicle speed, load shifts and effects like wind gusts
there has been a requirement of a system to find a balance between these extreme conditions
and passenger satisfaction.Hence researchers developed a system of active suspension system
which could be preset and arranged so that it can be used to reduce the camber and toe angles
thus maintaining stability and manuverability.There is always a compromise between ride
quality and vehicle manueverability which led to the introduction of advanced suspension
systems.However, these systems have high cost and are extremely complex.

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CHAPTER 2
PARAMETERS AND SYSTEM
The various components and parameters that are used to judge the characteristics of a good
suspension system can be discussed briefly.

Double Wishbone
The double wishbone structure is used mainly to reduce the drive height of the
vehicle. The system contains two wishbones or A arms some vehicle also uses H arms.
The system looks like a mac pherson struct with another wishbone.

Camber
It is the angle made between the vertical axis of the wheels used for steering and the
vertical axis of the wheel when viewed from the front or rear.

Toe
It is that symmetric angle that each wheel makes with the longitudinal axis of the vehicle

Anti-roll bar
The part of the suspension system which helps to reduce the body roll of the vehicle during
fast cornering or irregularities.

Leaf spring
It’s one of the main parts of a suspension system, slender piece of steel that is stacked with
the same material and bolted together creating a reinforced bow-like item.

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CHAPTER 3
ACTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEM AND DESIGN
Active suspension system considered consists of a Double wishbone Suspension, Electric
Control Unit ,Accelerometer Sensor and ServoActuators.The system is analysed by placing
the body in the test rig and subjecting it to varying profile conditions similar to potholes.A
negative camber is seen to be present when there is a wheel travel in the upward direction and
a positive towards the downward travel.The difference in the values of the parameters are
recorded and fed into the ECU in a closed loop cycle with the help of a PID controller.The
swing arm is determined by the desired roll centre and then the rod length is adjusted in a
manner that initial toe is found to be zero.Now the components of the double wishbone
system such as Upper A-arm, Lower A-arm, Tie rod ,Steering knuckle and Wheel travel are
considered and subjected to study.
The Upper A-arm is remodelled to adjust the camber angle by extension and retraction
process. Similarly the toe angle is being adjusted by allowing the tie rod to be remodelled and
allowing it to expand and retract in an orderly fashion.

Figure-1

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CHAPTER 4
DOUBLE WISHBONE
This suspension system is also referred to as “double A-arms” and primarily consists of two
wishbone shaped arms which are mounted at two points and joint at the knuckle.This allows
the motion of the wheel to be controlled throughout the suspension travel.Its mainly used to
reduce the drive height of the vehicle,the upper arm is shorter to induce negative camber. Use
of this in an adaptive suspension system is subjected to the study of vehicle turns. When a
motor vehicle is turning ,body roll results in the increased positive camber value on the inside
wheel ,while the outer wheel gets negative camber.Knuckle is another part of the mechanism
and contains a kingpin which judge the horizontal radial movement and rubber bushings for
vertical hinged movements. A bearing hub is present towards the centre connected to the
knuckle.

Figure-2:-Double Wishbone Suspension.

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CHAPTER 5
DESIGN OF EXPERIMENT
This section deals with finding out the necessary objective function inorder to determine the
six influential paramteres for the optimization of Ride Comfort(RC in m/s2) and Road
Holding(RH in cm).The six parameters are sprung mass (m in Kg), camber (cma in degrees),
toe (in mm), spring stiffness (ks in N/m), damping coefficient (cs in N-s/m) and tire pressure
(typ in psi). For this purpose Fractional Factorial method has been adopted .
It can be considered as an experiment where a certain values are selected and subjected to
repetitive cycles of application inorder to point out the most important information of our
subject of study. This method is a subset of the full factorial design process in the sense that
here only a fraction of the experimental runs and resources are used and analysed.
Now this method is analysed into four steps-

CHAPTER 5.1
Assimilation:-
It consists of using a Minitab Software for the purpose of experimentation and selecting a
randomized dual-replicate orthogonal matrix with respect to the rotational speed of the wheel
within blocks .Hence runs were conducted for the same and symmetric data table was
produced showing

Table-1

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CHAPTER 5.2
Regression Analysis:-
It is a set of statistical processes estimating the relationship between a dependent and an
independent variable. Basically it helps one to understand the changes produced by any
corresponding to the change in the other.Here we are considering 2 methods of analysis-
(a) Normal distribution.
(b) Homoscedasticity.

Hence tables were formed by considering, that the all random variables in the
sequence has same finite variance and whether the data set is normally distributed
among the parameters.

Table-2
The tables show that by implementing an orthogonal design the value of SE Coefficient is
low and same throughout the samples. 0.01647 for was recorded for RC and 0.04212 was
recorded for RH. Lower the value of Standard Error(SE) Coefficient, higher is the precision
with which the model can be predicted. Therefore it was seen that for ( RC )SE value was
significantly higher than that observed in case of (RH).

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Table-3

FIGURE-3

The graphs show the normal distribution of residuals over the range which proves the first
part of Regression Analysis(here) and the Residual Vs Fitted plot indicates the
homoscedasticity.
In both the plots shown no variation of systematic curvature, major outliers were seen and
the points were equally distributed with same amount of variance. It can also be seen that the
order has no strong trend which shows that there is zero random variation in the data
produced.

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CHAPTER 5.3
ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE(ANOVA)
This method is adopted to analyse and compare the differences among the parameters
sunjected to study.In this the observed variance in a particular value is considered and
partitioned into different parts and a statistical test is conducted. It is similar to t-test

TABLE-3

From the table we can see that the value of F, P, rotational speed, is significantly influential.
The P-values were 0.178 for RC and 0.279 for RH (lack of fit), hence shows its
insignificance. Also the negligible pure error values of 0.00724 and 0.05594 for the RC and
RH depicts thE credibility of the modles and their reproducibility.

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Table-4

CHAPTER 5.4
REGRESSION MODEL
An experimental model explaining the characteristic relationship between the selected
suspension and steering geometry variables are shown in figure.

Figure-4

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CHAPTER 6
PARAMETRIC ANALYSIS
Prametric Sensitivity Analysis is carried out to apportion the different sources of uncertainity
in its inputs. Here it is used to adjust the values of stiffness of the anti roll bar and leaf spring
inorder to maximize rollover threshold. It is seen that the value of roll stiffness and roll center
height are the primary variables inorder to determine rollover threshold thus reducing the roll
angle by a significant value.

CHAPTER 6.1
STATIC TEST
A tilt table test was conducted accordingly inorder to measure the roll angle at the centre of
gravity according to the tilt table angle. When the test was conducted it was seen that the
right rear tire initially lifted off the table and experimental data showed that the roll stiffness
of the rear suspension is higher than the front suspension. This is so that the point of
instability wasn’t reached by the suspension system.Therefore a balance was needed between
the stiffness values ,increasing roll stiffness so as to increase the stability factor.Front leaf
springs and anti roll bars were selected as parameters with varying anti roll bar diameters of
38,40,42 and stiffness values 20,23(kg/mm).

Figure-5

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CHAPTER 6.2
DYNAMIC TEST
This test provides information on real world operations were rollover is inevitable.For
considering this we are using two methods of application-

(a)Cornering Maneuver
In this the vehicle is allowed to move at a speed of 40km/h in a straight line and then allowed
to take a turn of 150 meter radius. Here also we are considering anti roll bar and leaf spring
stiffnesses and therefore have the magnitudes of diameters of 38, 40, 42 (mm) and
stiffness values of 20,23(kg/mm).From figure we can see that the rollover threshold can be
decreased with increasing suspension roll stiffness.

Figure-6

(b)Fishhook Maneuver.
It is iniated by subjecting a vehicle to move at high speeds and then allowed to make a
turn(cornering) suddenly at high relative speeds. So the vehicle is made to travel at a speed of
40km/h in a straight line and then the steering wheel is ramped at 550 degrees in 3
seconds.Steering wheel is kept at that position for 4 seconds and then changed to 0 degrees in
the following 2 seconds.From figure it is clear that rollover threshold can be increased by
increasing suspension roll stiffnes.

Figure-7

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Figure-8

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CHAPTER 7
SIMULATION
Simulation of the active suspension model is done with SimMechanics.It formulates and
solves the equations of motion for a complete mechanical system.The control system consists
of sensors and servo actuators along with PID controllers which works with the help of
Simulink library toolbox.Input signal (sinewave) is provided by means of a hydraulic jack for
providing the road profile by means of wheel travel.This changes the parameters like camber
and toe angle .This input is compared according to the results of passive system. Comparison
of these wheel travel is shown in figure.
The maximum value of camber angle was found to be 2.8 for the passive system and was
1.151 for the proposed one.Therefore we can understand that the active system offers better
maneuverability and comfort to the user. Another graph was plotted between camber angle
and wheel travel , it was seen that there is reduction in the camber angle as the wheel moves
,but a slight fluctuation can be seen because of the vibrations produced by the imbalance of
forces on the wheel centre plane and counter forces by the wheel travel.

Similar plots were done between wheel travel and toe angle variations ,it was seen that the
maximum toe angle produced by the passive system was -0.6 degrees and -0.023 degree for
active .Thus comparing the results and analyzing the data it was found that the active system
had an improvement of 56% of camber characteristics and 96% toe characteristics.

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Figure-9

Figure-10

Figure-11

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CHAPTER 8
APPLICATION OF ACTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEM.
The use of a new hybrid model vehicle for urban development resulted in
designing a vehicle based on a series of analytical simulations,FEM analysis,
bench and track tests. After doing so the vehicle was able to perform compared
to a car having a power ratio of 150kw.Design was made by reducing vehicles
width so that the two wheeler could lean into the corners similar to that of a
motorbike but can avoid rollover.Suspension design was modified with the need
of banking corners, so that suspension system tilts along with the frame parallel
to it. Major real world example is the BMW C1.
The designed prototype consists of a cage weighing less than 300 kg and has the
ability to carry two people at a time. The three wheels of the system can tilt
together accordingly, passenger seat is positioned in such a way that his/her
knees surround the drivers hip thus reduing the crossectional area, reduces the
overall weight of the vehicle. Front axle is having the two wheels attached to it
via a tilt crank,use of differential has been avoided .The entire prototype is a
space frame developed up by square and circular tubes.Now the design has been
modeled in such a way that the structure can be completely disassembled from
the main frame to allow varying characteristics. Stiffness requirements was
analysed by FEM calculations.
Proposed design could be possible with the help of a double wishbone system
thus able to control the castor angle, castor trail ,king pin.Two wheels are
aligned into two independent mono shock absorbers which are tuneable.This
means that the camber angle of all the three wheels are of same inclination to
the ground.Here the proposed active tilting model allows the tilting crank to be
adjusted with the help of a electromehanical actuator.During turns the actuation
system controls the vehicle roll angle and provides the torque to resist max
centrifugal force resulting in a roll over.
The actuator has been prototyped with motors connected by belt transmission to
planetary gear boxes to provide the torque for the tilt crank.
Figure12.1 -parts are (1) lever, (2) steering column, (3) steering rods, (4)
steering arm. Figure 12.3- parts are (1) Rim,(2) Perimeter brake and caliper,(3)
direct drive brushless motor,(4) Upright.

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Figure-12.1:- Steering Sub system

Figure-12.2:- Prototype of BMW c1

Figure-12.3:- Power Wheel

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CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSION

 We can see from our studies that the prototype achieved an improvement of 46.34%
in camber and a 93.35% in the toe variation of the active system over the passive
system. Hence the use of external sources such as an ECU , Actuators , Sensors,
Accelerometers can help to overcome the negative camber and therefore provide us
with a safe and secure system .
 The future aspects of this process would be to increase the frequency of the amplitude
signal so that non-linearity and also complex control mechanisms can be easily
refined and thus improving the response time .
 Using Adams software we were able to obtain an optimum set of all the parameters
for the respective responses.Hence optimal combination of pre-specified set of
variables is obtained.
 Virtual simulation can guide the designers to reach optimum suspension parameters
for the vehicle.
 The analysis shows that it is possible to maximize rollover threshold and increase
vehicle stability by tuning suspension parameters.
 The rollover threshold can be increased by 16.71% at maximum from the nominal
value using three different diameters of the front anti-roll bar and two different
stiffness of the front leaf spring.

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REFERENCES
 “Optimization of suspension system and sensitivity analysis for improvement of
stability in a midsize heavy vehicle” by (‘Emre Sert a,⇑, Pınar Boyraz’, Anadolu
Isuzu Automotive Industry and Trade, Inc., Istanbul University, Turkey, Istanbul
Technical University Turkey)
 “Design of Experiments For Optimization Of Automotive Suspension System Using
Quarter Car Test Rig“by (‘Anirban C. Mitraa*, Kiranchand G. R.b, Tanushri Sonic,
Nilotpal Banerjeed’,Asst. Professor in Mechanical Engg. Dept. M.E.S College of
Engineering, Pune-411001, INDIA ,Undergraduate Scholar, M.E.S College of
Engineering, Pune-411001, INDIA., Professor in Mechanical Engg. Dept .National
Institute of Technology, Durgapur-713213, INDIA.)
 “Urban and Extra Urban Vehicles:Re-Thinking the Vehicle Design” by (‘Andrea
Festini1, Andrea Tonoli2 and Enrico Zenerino’,Mechatronics Laboratory -
Politecnico di Torino 2 Mechanics Department, Mechatronics Laboratory -
Politecnico di TorinoItaly)

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