Improvement of vibrational comfort on agricultural vehicles by passive and semi-active cabin suspensions

Growing awareness that uncomfortable agricultural vehicles endanger the health of the operators and stricter norms concerning these health issues, make the design of an effective cabin suspension inevitable on agricultural vehicles. The comfort problem originates from the vibrations transmitted to the driver caused by the vehicle itself (engine, gearbox, ventilator, etc.) and the unevenness of the road or soil profile. This paper investigates the effect a passive and semi-active hydropneumatic cabin suspension has on the comfort of the drivers. After modeling the hydropneumatic device, the parameters in the model are optimized with respect to objective comfort parameters using a global optimization technique. The parameters in the semi-active control laws are optimized using the same approach. Improvements in comfort values up to 90% are observed. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.