Robust Design Of The Vehicle Suspension System Based On ADAMS And Dual Response Surface Methodology

The performance of the suspension system is one of the most important factors that candetermine the vehicle’s comfort and security. It is important to study advanced suspensiondesign theory and technology, which is significative for the ride comfort, handling stability,steering lightly as well as tire life. The robust design is a modern design theory andmethodology, and its purpose is to reduce product costs and improve product quality. Moreand more attention has been paid on how robust design method could be applied to the designof the vehicle suspension system.On the basis of the systematic introduction to the robust design’s development and itsapplication status in machinery and automotive industries, the article takes the McPhersonsuspension of a certain vehicle as the research object. And then the design issues of thevehicle suspension system are discussed, which are on the basis of the operational stability ofthe vehicle and the comfort of passengers, by using of robust design method. According to thethe suspension design requirements and aiming at the suspension beating performance, thechanges of some orientation angles, such as wheel positive camber, wheel Toe-in angle, rearcaster and inner caster, the wheel side slip and the vertical acceleration have been selected asthe response to evaluate the beating performance of the McPherson suspension system.Frist the selected McPherson suspension system is reasonably simplified, then theMcPherson suspension model is established by using suspension parameters with ADAMSsoftware and its space kinematics is defined. What is more, the model is simulated andanalyzed on the kinematics in ADAMS/View. In this way, the key points greatly impacting thesuspension performance are identified. According to the theory of robust design, the structuraldimensions of the suspension system are controllable factors, while stiffness and damping areuncontrollable factors. The article arranges test programs about design variables and noisefactors by Box-Behnken Design (BBD) and orthogonal experiment method. Then, the modelof suspensions is simulated with them and the test data which is constraint by confidenceregion are obtained.On the basis of the test simulation, the multiple target responses which reflect thesuspension beating performance are turned into a single objective response by using TOPSIS.Using the obtained data, the dual response surface equations of mean and variance are fit andanalyzed. If the built response surface models are reasonable, the mean and variance responsesurface equations which have been obtained just now will be linearized, and then the robustdesign results are got finally. At last, the article analyzes of the results of the robust design,tests and verifies them by ADAMS. Under considering the impact of noise factors which are uncertain, the article mainlychanges the values of the design variables. At the same time, the robustness about beatingperformance of the vehicle suspension system is analyzed with the dual response surfacemethodology (DRSM) by using the confidence region constraint. Under the condition ofconsidering parts of manufacturing errors in the actual situation, the robust design based onthe dual response surface methodology provides a new method to research on the vehiclesuspension system.