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. 2023 Jan 20;18(1):e0280290.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0280290. eCollection 2023.

Investigation of inerter-based suspension systems for heavy vehicles

Ming Foong Soong  1 , Rahizar Ramli  1 , Ahmad Abdullah Saifizul  1 , Kah Yin Goh  1 , Su Xian Long  1
Affiliations

Investigation of inerter-based suspension systems for heavy vehicles

Ming Foong Soong et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

The inerter is a two-terminal component that can be added to the spring-and-damper configuration of a suspension system. It has the property that the force exerted is proportional to the relative acceleration at its terminals. Studies have demonstrated the inerter's benefit of providing superior vibration isolation when it is used in the vehicle suspension of passenger cars. However, similar benefit on another common vehicle class on the roads, namely heavy vehicles, remain to be shown, as these vehicles have vastly different parameter values than passenger cars. This study is an investigation on the performance improvement brought by an inerter in the suspension of common heavy vehicles. In the study, the parameter values of a truck and a bus were adopted in the quarter vehicle model with two different spring-damper-inerter configurations (parallel and serial inerter), and the improvements in vibration isolation and road holding capability were determined by optimization of inertance. Results show that the inerter is similarly effective in providing the said improvements when implemented on heavy vehicles instead of on passenger cars, judging from reductions in sprung mass acceleration and dynamic tire load. It is also observed that the performance benefit is associated with larger optimum inertance than that for passenger cars. Overall, the inerter has been shown to be beneficial in the parallel and serial configurations, both of which are common and can be practically implemented in the suspension of heavy vehicles.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. A quarter vehicle model with (a) typical spring and damper suspension, (b) parallel inerter suspension layout, and (c) serial inerter suspension layout.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Representation of (a) step road profile of 0.1 m height and (b) random smooth road profile in the study.
Fig 3
Fig 3. (a) RMS sprung mass acceleration and (b) RMS dynamic tire load against parallel inertance for truck, with (c) RMS sprung mass acceleration and (d) RMS dynamic tire load variation for bus.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Pareto fronts for truck considering (a) step road input and (b) random road input, with the same optimization for bus considering (c) step road input and (d) random road input.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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