ON IMPROVING THE PERFORMANCE OF AUTOMOTIVE SEMI-ACTIVE SUSPENSION SYSTEMS THROUGH ROAD PREVIEW

A quarter car suspension system model containing a controllable damper with a limited range of coefficient values, a limited adjustment system bandwidth and a realistic elastic mounting to the car body is optimized for operation on a random road through a novel numerical method. The optimized system is simulated traversing random road surfaces and performance measures are extracted from the simulation runs. Comparisons are made with corresponding measures from relevant alternative systems. The effectiveness of the numerical optimization is established and conclusions are drawn on the usage and value of preview for semi-active automotive suspensions.