Energy harvesting, handling and ride comfort trade-off between passive and active suspension systems of half vehicle model using PID controller for off-road vehicles

Vehicle suspension is a major source of energy dissipation while ride and handling are important tasks of a satisfactory suspension system. This paper spearheads the investigating of energy harvesting, handling and ride comfort tradeoff between passive and active suspension systems of half vehicle model using PID controller for off-road vehicles using half-vehicle model while two road types of random and harmonic are employed. A critical question of a balance energy analysis of power requirement for such a suspension system and the amount of partial recovery of such a need by the energy harvesting approach is answered. It was concluded that the proposed model is able to decrease the pitching motion and sprung mass displacement 5 times leading to a satisfactory perception of ride quality. The handling index of the vehicle varied from 0.02 to 0.14 when the speed increased from 40 to100 km/h being in a safe range that ensures a robust tire-ground contact force. The harvestable power also increases from 148 up to 511 W and actuator force increases from 400 N up to 2463 N when the profile amplitude increases from 0.01 to 0.05 m. It was found that excitation frequency has the greatest impact both on harvestable power and the actuator force needed to attenuate the vibration. Finally, random road excitation has a greater impact on harvestable power and on actuator force when compared to harmonic road but among the random roads, the smooth runway had a lower effect than that of rough runway. Simulation results show that the proposed controller can potentially achieve a balance between ride comfort and handling performance while a considerable amount of the wasted power can be recovered for the actuator utilization.