Influence of balanced suspension on handling stability and ride comfort of off-road vehicle

Abstract

Handing stability and ride comfort, basic indexes to evaluate vehicle performance, usually cannot be guaranteed simultaneously. Given the contradiction between the two indexes, a new type of suspension – balanced suspension, has attracted wide attentions for years. Balanced suspensions are a device that converts the movement of a wheel into force at the other wheels through a mechanical or hydraulic structure, which might improve ride comfort/handling stability while maintaining the handling stability/ride comfort. As the hydraulically interconnected suspension and hydro-pneumatic suspension show disadvantages of high cost and high installation space requirement, a specific balanced suspension which is connected through a mechanical structure is presented and thoroughly analyzed in this paper. The balanced suspension connects the front and rear suspension motion of the vehicle by means of the lever mechanical connection structure to obtain the comprehensive performance of enhanced vehicle’s ride comfort and handling stability. The half-vehicle mathematical model for ride comfort and the multi-body dynamics model for handling stability are established for the comparison and analysis of the dynamic performance of vehicle when the balanced suspension on and off. In addition, experimental tests of the modified vehicle prototypes when the balanced suspension on and off on the ride comfort and handling stability are conducted. Similar with the simulation results, experimental tests show that the handling stability is nearly unchanged while the ride comfort improves about 15.9% when the balanced suspension is on.