Modeling, Prototyping and Testing of Regenerative Electromagnetic Shock Absorber

Abstract

It is well fact known that automobiles are inefficient, wasting over 74% of energy stored in fuel as a heat. One important loss is the dissipation of vibration energy by shock absorbers in the vehicle suspension under the excitation of road irregularity and vehicle acceleration or deceleration. In this paper we design, characterize and test a regenerative electromagnetic shock absorber which can effectively recover the vibration from the road irregularity. Regeneration energy is main purpose of the design without omit vehicle comfort and handling. The dynamic model of the entire system of the electromagnetic shock absorber was proposed and described. The performance of the electric shock absorber obtained from simulations was compared toward the experiment results. Refers to the simulation, a quarter car will be able to harvest 45 Watt average power while passing C class roads with 50 km/h vehicle speed. A peak power of 45 Watt and average power of 11.43 Watt are attained from the prototype when oscillating speed of bench test at 0.1 m/s, the RMS value of suspension velocity when vehicle pass C class road with speed 50 km/h.