OPTIMAL DAMPING MATCHING Of SHOCK ABSORBER FOR A LIGHT TRUCK SUSPENSION SYSTEM

Damping matching is a key issue in the design of shock absorber for a vehicle suspension system. For light trucks, a half vehicle model for the optimal design of suspension damping is established in MATLAB.Using the root mean square value of the vertical and pitching accelerations of the vehicle body and the tire dynamic load as the evaluation index, the objective function of the damping ratio optimization design is established through the linearity-weighted-sum method. Under the stochastic road roughness excitation, the suspension damping ratio is optimized and analyzed, and the result is verified by the real car experiment. It is shown that the optimal design of the suspension damping ratio effectively improves the vehicle ride comfort, and thus provides a useful reference for the dynamic design of the vehicle suspension.