Semi-active hydro-gas suspension system for a tracked vehicle

A semi-active hydro-gas suspension is proposed for a tracked vehicle to improve ride comfort performance, without compromising the road holding and load carrying capabilities of the passive suspension. This is achieved through an active damper used in parallel with a gas spring. The suspension damper parameters are varied by a control mechanism based on sky-hook damping theory, which alters the flow characteristics. A damper prototype has been developed, tested for its flow characteristics, after which it has been integrated into an existing hydro-gas suspension system. An analytical model has been proposed from first principles rather than developing a phenomenological model based on experimental characteristics. This model is validated with experiments carried out on a suspension test rig. In order to compare the performance with the original passive system, an in-plane vehicle model is developed and the simulations clearly show that the semi-active system performance is superior to the passive system.

Research highlights
► Analytical suspension model from physics as opposed to phenomenological models.
► Development of active damper hardware with PID control and experiments on the hardware.
► Validation of models with separate experiments for spring and damper characteristics.
► In-plane tracked vehicle model validated with field data for passive damper.
► Demonstrating the effectiveness of proposed semi-active control strategy.