System approach to vehicle suspension system control in CAE environment

Abstract

In recent years, the motor vehicle industry has shown a tendency of replacing electro-mechanical components by mechatronic systems with intelligent and autonomous properties. The integration of hardware components and implementation of advance control function characterize this replacement. In this text, we have applied the system approach and system engineering methods in the initial phase of vehicle active suspension development. An emphasis has been placed upon the interrelations between computer-aided simulation and other elements of development process. The benefits of the application of active suspension simulation are numerous: reduction of time to market, the new and improved functions of mechatronic components/devices, and the increased system reliability. In suspension model development, we used CAD/ CAE tools, as well as the multipurpose simulation programs. For simulation, we used the quarter-car model. The modeling was carried out through the state-space equation, after which we designed two variants of controller for the suspension system - proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller and neural network controller.