A hybrid electromagnetic shock absorber for active vehicle suspension systems

Abstract

The use of electromagnetic dampers (ED) in vehicle active suspension systems has drawn considerable attention in the past few years, attributed to the fact that active suspension systems have shown superior performance in improving ride comfort and road handling of terrain vehicles, compared with their passive and semi-active counterparts. Although demonstrating superb performance, active suspensions still have some shortcomings that must be overcome. They have high energy consumption, weight, and cost and are not fail-safe in case of a power breakdown. The novel hybrid ED, which is proposed in this paper, is a potential solution to the above-mentioned drawbacks of conventional active suspension systems. The proposed hybrid ED is designed to inherit the high-performance characteristics of an active ED with the reliability of a passive damper in a single package. The eddy current damping effect is utilised as a source of the passive damping. First, a prototype ED is designed and fabricated. The prototype ED is then utilised to experimentally establish the design requirements for a real-size active ED. This is accomplished by comparing its vibration isolation performance in a 1-DOF quarter-car test rig with that of a same-class semi-active damper. Then, after a real-size active ED is designed, the concept of hybrid damper is introduced to the damper design to address the drawbacks of the active ED. Finally, the finite-element method is used to accurately model and analyse the designed hybrid damper. It is demonstrated that by introducing the eddy current damping effect to the active part, a passive damping of approximately 1570 Ns/m is achieved. This amount of passive damping guarantees that the damper is fail-safe and reduces the power consumption more than 70%, compared with an active ED in an automotive active suspension system.

Development and optimization of an energy-regenerative suspension system under stochastic road excitation

“…Kowal et al [2] developed an electro-hydraulic self-powered suspension system that accumulated energy in a pneumohydraulic accumulator. Ebrahimi et al [3,4] proposed a hybrid linear EM damper that acted as a viscous damper for ride comfort improvement, with self-powered capability. A linear motor based active suspension topology with energy regeneration capabilities was introduced by David and Bobrovsky [5].…”

Hardware-in-the-loop simulation experiment for semi-active vibration control of lateral vibrations of railway vehicle by magneto-rheological fluid damper

“…[10][11][12][13][14] The so-called MR damper changes its fluid characteristics according to the magnetic field intensity. Applications of the MR damper include the seismic control of bridges and tall buildings; the suspension system for vehicles; passenger seats and washing machine drums.…”

“…The ALS has been studied analytically and tested experimentally since 1970. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] The mechatronics system for theALS consists of sensors, actuators and a controller. [1] The mechatronics systems already have proven performance in tilting trains.…”

Design of the Hybrid Regenerative Shock Absorber and Energy Harvesting from Linear Movement

“…The external circuit was integrated to the system to observe the harvested energy properties of shock absorbers. To obtain the optimum harvesting energy from the regenerative shock absorber, the value of external resistors of system was chosen as equal to the internal resistors of the coil and generator [14], [24]- [28]. The constant resistors were used as the load of the energy harvesting system.…”

“…The studies of hydraulic and EM shock absorbers have demonstrated that external electrical circuit is integrated to the system to observe the harvested energy and damping properties of shock absorbers [14], [24]- [27].…”