System Approach to Vehicle Suspension System Control in CAE Environment

In recent years, motor vehicles industry has shown a tendency of replacing electromechanical components by mechatronic systems with intelligent and autonomous properties. The integration of hardware components and implementation of advance control function characterize this replacement. In this paper we have applied the system approach and system engineering methods in the initial phase of vehicle active suspension development. An emphasis has been placed upon the interrelations between computer-aided simulation and other elements of the development process. The benefits of application of active suspension simulation are numerous: reduction of time to market, the new and improved functions of mechatronic components/devices, as well as the increased system reliability. In suspension model development, we used CAD/CAE tools, as well as the multipurpose simulation programs. For simulation, we used the one-quarter vehicle model. The modelling was carried out through the state-space equation, after which we designed the controller for our system. During this, we considered only the digital systems of automatic regulation. (C)2011 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.