Citation

Zhu JJ, Khajepour A, Esmailzadeh E. Int. J. Veh. Syst. Model. Test. 2010; 5(1): 18-34.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2010, Inderscience Publishers)

DOI

10.1504/IJVSMT.2010.033729

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The suspension system of a vehicle is commonly designed such that the longitudinal connection between the vehicle chassis and the wheels is always very stiff compared with the vertical connection. Such a mechanism can isolate the vibration and absorb the shock efficiently in the vertical direction but it cannot attenuate the impact caused by road obstacles in the longitudinal direction. In order to overcome this limitation, a concept design of a planar vehicle suspension was proposed in which the rather stiff linkages in the longitudinal direction between the chassis and wheel were replaced by elastic connections so that the vibration along any direction in the wheel plane can be isolated. This paper presents the study of pitch dynamic performance of a vehicle with such a conceptual planar suspension in frequency and time domains. The comparison with a conventional suspension is also performed to exhibit the potential of the conceptual design.