Performance Research On Vane Type Energy-harvest Shock Absorber Of Tracked Vehicles

The traditional shock absorber converts vibration energy from road roughnessinto the heat energy dissipated to the air, while the paper presents the vane typeenergy-harvest shock absorber (VTESA) which can recover the vibration energy. Asan important component of tracked vehicle suspension systems, the VTESA firstlyacts as damping element to suppress body vibration in order to achieve good ridecomfort. Then, it works as energy-harvest device to recover the vibration energy asmuch as possible and improve the efficiency of energy-harvest.Firstly, influence of major parameters on VTESA internal characteristic isanalyzed. Damping characteristic is performed on VTESA compared with traditionalshock absorber. Results show that there exists no big difference between them at lowfrequencies, and that at high frequencies, working chamber pressure of VTESAfluctuate irregularly, and it presents its unique damping characteristic.Secondly, power output of electric generator is obtained at different stablecurrent when VTESA is under sine excitation. Simulation shows that power outputincreases with the stable current, but it becomes unstable. It can be concluded thatVTESA has great potential on energy-harvest and great practical value applying fortracked vehicles.Thirdly, simulation model for two-degree-of-freedom (2DOF) suspensionvibration system is built. Performance is compared between suspension equippedwith VTESA and that with traditional shock absorber at time and frequency domain.Results show that the former suspension is slightly inferior in aspects of ride comfortand shock absorber reliability, and nearly the same with traditional suspension indriving security. There exists only little difference between all performanceevaluation indexes, so the suspension equipped with VTESA is able to achieve theperformance of traditional suspension.Finally, eight-degree-of-freedom vibration model for a half tracked vehicle is setup in Simulink environment. Running test of ride comfort on random road isconducted between vehicle equipped with VTESA and that with traditional shock absorber at different vehicle speed. Through analyzing root mean square (RMS) ofevery performance evaluation index, it is observed that the vehicle equipped withVTESA is superior in suspension travel and road wheel deformation, but somewhatinferior in body acceleration, pitch angle and suspension relative velocity.