Article Preview
Top2. Literature Review
A suspension system should be able to isolate a car body from road disturbances for providing good ride quality by reducing the vibratory forces transmitted from the axle to the vehicle body. This reduces vehicle body acceleration. Thus, ride quality can be generally quantified by the vertical acceleration of the passenger locations. In the case of typical suspension system without passenger or seat model, it can be quantified by the sprung mass acceleration (Rajamani, 2006).
Shirahatt et al. (2008) introduced vertical acceleration in a suitable optimizing technique applied at design stage to obtain the suspension parameters of a passive and active suspension for a passenger car which satisfies the performance as per ISO 2631 standards. They found that seat acceleration and sprung mass vertical acceleration are reduced by about 90% in case of active suspension as compared with passive suspension.
Tong and Guo (2012) used vertical acceleration for investigating on a new-type suspension which could even vertical loads of each wheel, reduce the torsion of vehicle body and improve the wheel ground adhesion.
Many other researchers analysed vertical acceleration with the aim of studying the comfort of the passengers on board. It needs to consider that vehicles travel at various speeds and experience a large spectrum of vibrations. Due to road roughness and vehicle vibration, occupants are subjected to accelerations in different directions, and this conditions cause discomfort. Such vibrations are transmitted to the vehicle passengers as a result of their contact with the seat, steering wheel, and foot rest. Therefore, occupant comfort is directly associated with the ride performance of a road vehicle (Wu et al., 2013).