Vibration suppression of terrains irregularities using active aerodynamic surface for half-car model sport vehicles

Abstract

Riding quality is considered a key element in automotive industry which imposes a challenge on car manufacturers to develop new alternative control strategies for the classical suspension system. To this extent, many efforts have been carried out on developing several active or semi-active suspension systems. In the past few years, the decreasing cost of electromechanical actuators has, however, opened new trends to face this challenge. Active aerodynamic surfaces (spoilers) represent an alternative and effective solution to the issue. Two contradicting criteria of good vehicle suspension performance are typically their ability to provide good road handling and increase passengers comfort. The main disturbance affecting these two criteria is terrain irregularities. Active suspension control systems reduce these undesirable effects by isolating car body motion from vibrations at the wheels. In this article, we are trying to investigate the use of active aerodynamic surfaces to enhance ride comfort in sport vehicles for half car model. The article describes also the model and controller used in the study and discusses the vehicle response results obtained from a typical road sinusoidal signal input. The effect of active aerodynamic surfaces could enhance the ride comfort by (15%) without affecting road holding.