Novel Method of Forecasting Performance of Full Vehicle Suspension by Decoupling Analysis and Vibration Sensing Experiments

A quarter, half, or full car model is often adopted as the basis of vibration control for the design and evaluation of automotive suspension systems. Regarding automotive suspension systems, a quarter vehicle design-and-test result cannot be used as a substitute for a full vehicle owing to the coupling phenomenon. In this study, by deriving the coupling ratios between the sprung mass of a full car and four sprung masses of quarter cars, the analysis of a full vehicle dynamics is performed with 14 degrees of freedom in the conventional vertical and assisted lateral directions. It is found that for car suspensions, the full car model can be conditionally expressed by four independent quarter car models. Moreover, we verify our proposed novel performance forecasting method for a full vehicle suspension through analyses and investigations via suitable designated vibration sensing experiments. Furthermore, a case study shows that the vibration of a full vehicle can be quantitatively obtained on the basis of test results of quarter suspensions.