A Comparison of Quarter, Half and Full Car Models for Predicting Vibration Attenuation of an Occupant in a Vehicle

Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies (2021)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose

A study of vibration attenuation of a vehicle occupant needs to start by integrating models of human body, cushion, seat suspension and vehicle. The latter needs to be carefully chosen to get the right balance between modelling complexity and prediction accuracy. This work considers two simplified vehicle models (quarter and half car) and studies how much the predictions of these models deviate from that of the full car model.

Methods

The seat suspension parameters were chosen to be those which minimized seat effective amplitude transmissibility. A genetic algorithm based optimization procedure was used for this exercise. A total of 28 model response parameters were investigated which included accelerations of different sections of the body and seat suspension, forces generated due to contact of the body with the seat and the backrest, forces and moments at the internal joints of the body and seat effective amplitude transmissibility.

Results

It was seen that when the input to the system was the random disturbances from an irregular road, the predictions of the quarter car model were distinctly different from those of the full car model while the half car model gave acceptable results in a few cases. However, when the input condition was changed to a bump on the road, the apparent superiority of the half car model was less prominent.

Conclusion

Thus, for a random road profile, it is better to choose the half car as a simplified vehicle model. For a bump road profile, the quarter car model, which is considerably simpler, maybe preferred if computing time or complexity is a constraint.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India

    Raj Desai & Anirban Guha

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Dharwad, India

    P. Seshu

Authors
  1. Raj Desai
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  2. Anirban Guha
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  3. P. Seshu
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Correspondence to Raj Desai.

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Appendix

Appendix

See below Tables 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

Table 5 Human body anthropometric data [30]
Full size table
Table 6 Geometric parameters of CG, joint location, mass and inertia data [30, 31]
Full size table
Table 7 Human body model parameters (spring stiffness in N/m, damping in Ns/m, torsional stiffness Nm/rad and torsional damping in Nm-s/rad)
Full size table
Table 8 Cushion parameter values
Full size table
Table 9 System parameters of 3D full vehicle model
Full size table

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Desai, R., Guha, A. & Seshu, P. A Comparison of Quarter, Half and Full Car Models for Predicting Vibration Attenuation of an Occupant in a Vehicle. J. Vib. Eng. Technol. (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42417-020-00278-3

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Keywords

  • Biodynamics
  • Multibody dynamics
  • Genetic algorithm
  • Vehicle model
  • Seat suspension
  • Optimization