Design and Performance Evaluation of Electro-rheological Shock Absorber for Electronic Control Suspension

This paper presents design and performance evaluation of electro-rheological(ER) shock absorber for electronic control suspension(ECS). In order to achieve this goal, a cylindrical ER shock absorber that satisfies design specifications for a mid-sized commercial passenger vehicle is designed and manufactured to construct ER suspension system for ECS. After experimentally evaluating dynamic characteristics of the manufactured ER shock absorber, the quarter-vehicle ER suspension system consisting of sprung mass, spring, tire and the ER shock absorber is constructed in order to investigate the ride comfort and driving stability. After deriving the equations of the motion for the proposed quarter-vehicle ER suspension system, the skyhook controller is implemented for the realization of quarter-vehicle ER suspension system. In order to present control performance of ER shock absorber for ECS, ride comfort and driving stability characteristics such as vertical acceleration and tire deflection are experimentally evaluated under various road conditions and presented in both time and frequency domain.