Regenerative Vibration Damping of a Suspension System Testbed

In this paper, an energy-regenerative suspension system is implemented consisting of a linear DC machine, power electronic circuity, and a battery. The linear DC machine operates as a generator, converting the vibration energy of a mass-spring system into battery charge. The linear DC machine generates desired forces acting between the unsprung and sprung masses of the suspension system; hence acting as a damper that transforms vibrations into electrical charge stored in a battery. A pulse-width-modulated (PWM) power electronic converter is utilized to achieve the transfer of power to the battery. The proposed method is applied to a quarter car test rig to evaluate performance of the regenerative suspension system.