Optimum design of "road-friendly" vehicle suspension systems subjected to rough pavement surfaces

This paper presents an optimum concept to design "road-friendly" vehicles with the recognition of pavement loads as a primary objective function of vehicle suspension design. A walking-beam suspension system is used as an illustrative example of vehicle model to demonstrate the concept and process of optimization. The hypothesis of isotropy is applied to the measured one-dimensional road profile so that a two-dimensional random field model of pavement surface roughness can be achieved. Dynamic response of the walking-beam suspension system is obtained by means of stochastic process theory. Three commonly used objective of suspension optimum design, including ride quality, suspension stroke, and road adhesion, are briefly reviewed. The minimization of the probability of peak value of the tire load exceeding a given value is proposed as an objective function. Using the direct update method, optimization is carried out when tire loads is taken as the objective function of suspension design. The results show that tires with high air pressure and suspension systems with small damping will lead to large tire loads. The concept proposed in this paper is applicable to generic cases, where more complex vehicle model and pavement surface condition apply. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.