Performance Analysis of Passenger Vehicle Featuring ER Damper with Different Tire Pressure

Abstract

This paper presents performance analysis of a controllable electro-rheological (ER) damper for a passenger vehicle with different tire pressure. In order to achieve this research goal, an ER damper, which satisfies design specifications for a mid-sized passenger vehicle, is designed and manufactured. After experimentally evaluating the field-dependent characteristics of the manufactured ER damper, the quarter-vehicle suspension system consisting of sprung mass, spring, tire and the ER damper is constructed in order to investigate the ride comfort with different tire pressure. After deriving the equations of the motion for the proposed quarter-vehicle ER suspension system, vertical tire stiffness with respect to different tire pressure is experimentally identified. Ride comfort characteristics such as vertical acceleration RMS (root mean square) of sprung mass are evaluated under bump road conditions using a quarter-vehicle test facility.