Ride Comfort Investigation of 1/4 MR Damper Vehicle under Different Tire Pressure

This paper presents ride comfort characteristics of a quarter-vehicle magneto-rheological(MR) suspension system with respect to different tire pressure. As a first step, controllable MR damper is designed and modeled based on both the optimized damping force levels and mechanical dimensions required for a commercial full-size passenger vehicle. Then, a quarter-vehicle suspension system consisting of sprung mass, spring, tire and the MR damper is constructed. After deriving the equations of the motion for the proposed quarter-vehicle MR suspension system, vertical tire stiffness with respect to different tire pressure is experimentally identified. The skyhook controller is then implemented for the realization of the quarter-vehicle MR suspension system. Finally, the ride comfort analysis with respect to different tire pressure is undertaken in time domain. In addition, a comparative result between controlled and uncontrolled is provided by presenting vertical RMS displacement.