DAMPING OPTIMIZATION OF PASSIVE AND SEMI-ACTIVE VEHICLE SUSPENSION BY NUMERICAL SIMULATION

The Newmark method and Monte Carlo simulation are used to obtain the mean square response of SDOF suspension model with nonlinear damping, excited by stationary Gaussian white noise. The aim of the paper is to optimize the system nonlinear damping characteristic, both for passive and semi-active models of vehicle suspension, with respect to the ride comfort criterion (minimum r.m.s. body acceleration). It is shown that the semi-active suspension with sequential dry friction can provide a perceptible comfort improvement in comparison with the optimum linear or nonlinear passive suspensions.