The Analysis And Optimization On The Ride Comfort Performance Of Four-axle Heavy Commercial Vehicle With Balanced Suspension

With the consumers’ high requirements of vehicle NVH performance, ride comfort, one of the important evaluation indicators of vehicle performance, has become increasingly important for commercial vehicle. Nice ride comfort guarantees the driver’s comfort so that the possibility of accidents can be reduced. This paper takes an investigation on a four-axle heavy commercial vehicle. Multi-body dynamic model and mathematical model of the vehicle are constructed. The ride comfort of the vehicle is analyzed and the suspension parameters are optimized.To improve the ride comfort, at first, the complete ADAMS model is constructed based on parameters. The ride comfort of the vehicle under random and pulse road is simulated and analyzed. Using weighted acceleration root-mean-square (RMS) of driver’s seat as a standard, the ride comfort of the vehicle is evaluated. After that, half vehicle nine-degree-of-freedom mathematical model is constructed. In the aspect of the vehicle structure, the model includes balanced suspension and driving cab, and referring to suspension mechanical properties, the nonlinearity of the damping is taken into consideration. Simulated analytical model is constructed in SIMULINK and the ride comfort of the vehicle is analyzed. Compared with the results of ADAMS model, the results of SIMULINK is consistent. At last, a genetic algorithm is applied to the optimization of the stiffness and damping of the vehicle suspension. Three optimization schemes are proposed where the objective functions are treated based on ride comfort performance under different speeds and different types of road. The comparison of the simulated RMS of the driving cab vertical acceleration indicates that the ride comfort performance has been improved efficiently.