Title: Design of 'road friendly' suspensions for quarter and half heavy goods vehicle models by using genetic algorithm and a multi-objective performance index

Authors: M.J. Pable; P. Seshu

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai-400076, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai-400076, India

Abstract: The main objective of present study is to design a road friendly suspension (which minimises road damage) for a heavy goods vehicle (HGV). Quarter HGV model and half HGV model are used to represent vehicle dynamics. Genetic algorithm has been used for optimisation. It is shown that, for less road damage, soft suspension spring and hard damper are required. For half HGV, the tyre station that has more road damaging potential has been optimised more. Even though the suspension is optimised for a uniform vehicle speed on a given random road profile, the optimised suspension is shown to perform well over a wide frequency range for a sinusoidal road excitation. It is also shown that the optimised passive suspension performs well for hump road input. A comparative study between multi-objective performance index and road damage performance index alone is also presented.

Keywords: road damage; fourth power law; suspension; heavy goods vehicles; HGVs; multi-objective optimisation; genetic algorithms; GAs; heavy vehicles; vehicle suspension; vehicle design; HGV modelling; soft suspension springs; hard dampers; vehicle speed; passive suspension.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVSMT.2012.045310

International Journal of Vehicle Systems Modelling and Testing, 2012 Vol.7 No.1, pp.26 - 53

Received: 06 Sep 2010
Accepted: 24 Jun 2011
Published online: 13 Sep 2014 *

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