2012 6 Energy Harvesting, Ride Comfort, and Road Handling of Regenerative Vehicle Suspensions.pdfVIP

Lei Zuo1 e-mail: lei.zuo@ Pei-Sheng Zhang Department of Mechanical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-2300 Energy Harvesting, Ride Comfort, and Road Handling of Regenerative Vehicle Suspensions This paper presents a comprehensive assessment of the power that is available for harvest- ing in the vehicle suspension system and the tradeoff among energy harvesting, ride com- fort, and road handing with analysis, simulations, and experiments. The excitation from road irregularity is modeled as a stationary random process with road roughness suggested in the ISO standard. The concept of system H2 norm is used to obtain the mean value of power generation and the root mean square values of vehicle body acceleration (ride qual- ity) and dynamic tire-ground contact force (road handling). For a quarter car model, an analytical solution of the mean power is obtained. The influence of road roughness, vehicle speed, suspension stiffness, shock absorber damping, tire stiffness, and the wheel and chasses masses to the vehicle performances and harvestable power are studied. Experi- ments are carried out to verify the theoretical analysis. The results suggest that road rough- ness, tire stiffness, and vehicle driving speed have great influence on the harvesting power potential, where the suspension stiffness, absorber damping, and vehicle masses are insen- sitive. At 60 mph on good and average roads, 100–400 W average power is available in the suspensions of a middle-sized vehicle. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4007562] 1 Introduction When vehicles travel on the road, they are always subjected to excitation from road irregularities, braking forces, acceleration forces, and inertial forces on a curved track, which causes discom- fort to the driver and influences maneuverability. Viscous shock absorbers, in parallel with suspension springs, have been widely used to reduce the vibration by dissipating the vibration energy into heat waste. To achieve better