Power dissipation in automotive suspensions

Abstract

For a standard quarter-car vehicle model and a road disturbance whose velocity profile is white noise, it is shown that the power dissipated in the suspension is proportional to the tyre vertical stiffness and the noise intensity, but is independent of all masses and suspension parameters. The dependence of this result on the modelling assumptions is explored. It is shown that the road disturbance model is ill-posed for the computation of power dissipation in the tyre and a modification is suggested. Computational results then indicate that the total power dissipation is still very insensitive to variations in vehicle and suspension parameters, but not tyre parameters, even though the suspension power dissipation and the tyre power dissipation vary individually. The extension of the result to half-car vehicle models is also considered. For both the pitch-plane and roll-plane models, it is found from numerical examples that the broad conclusion of large dependence of the total power dissipation on tyre parameters and small dependence on all other parameters remains. A brief discussion is included on the contribution to power loss due to rolling resistance.

Keywords:

• suspension systems
• energy dissipation
• tyre damping
• stochastic road profile
• passive suspensions

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful for the helpful remarks of J.M.C. Clark, D.J. Cole, T.T. Georgiou and A.J. Purnell.