Tang 2015
Tang 2015
Tang 2015
Commercial Vehicle
Gang Tang
Hefei University of Technology
Ying Sun
C&C Trucks Co., Ltd
CITATION: Tang, G., Zhu, H., Zhang, Y., and Sun, Y., "Studies of Air Spring Mathematical Model and its Performance in Cab
Suspension System of Commercial Vehicle," SAE Technical Paper 2015-01-0608, 2015, doi:10.4271/2015-01-0608.
Copyright © 2015 SAE International
Abstract roll and pitch motions. Xu et al. [5] enhanced the cab vibration
isolation performance by achieving the desired nature frequency
The vehicle ride comfort behavior is closely associated with the
range and minimizing the motion coupling at each mode of the cab.
vibration isolation system such as the primary suspension system, the
engine mounting system, the cab suspension system and the seat
Air spring has been widely applied to commercial vehicles for its low
suspension system. Air spring is widely used in the cab suspension
vibration transmissibility, variable spring rate and inexpensive
system for its low vibration transmissibility, variable spring rate and
automatic leveling. Sreedhar et al. [6] built a simplified air
inexpensive automatic leveling.
suspension model and the leveling valve model with a customized
function in ADAMS software, and built a full commercial passenger
The mathematical model of the air spring is presented. The amplitude
vehicle to evaluate the ride performance and to acquire the force
and frequency dependency of the air spring's stiffness characteristic is
excitation for the further durability analysis. Jin et al. [7] applied the
highlighted. The air spring dynamic model is validated by comparing
air spring with auxiliary volume to the heavy truck's driver seat
the results of the experiment and the simulation. The co-simulation
suspension system. They simplified the air spring only considering its
method of ADAMS and AMESim is applied to integrate the air spring
nonlinear static stiffness, but in fact the air spring's stiffness also
mathematical model into the cab multi-body dynamic model. The
depends on the amplitude and frequency of the excitation.
simulation and ride comfort test results under random excitation are
compared. It shows that the co-simulation model of the cab air spring
Several air spring models have been proposed to improve the
suspensions which considers the effects of the air spring dynamic
modeling accuracy. Quaglia and Sorli [8] derived a thermodynamic
stiffness characteristic has a good agreement with that in the test.
model of air spring with auxiliary reservoir, and Docquier et al. [9]
developed the air spring model considering the air in the pipe as a
Introduction constant moving mass. Furthermore, Lee [10] analyzed the hysteresis
affected by the heat transfer and the variation of the effective area.
In an increasingly competitive automotive market, it is important for
Considering the pipe used in the cab suspension pneumatic system is
automotive company to improve the vehicle's ride comfort and
far shorter and thinner than that of the railway vehicles, so the
reduce the cost. Many researchers [1,2,3] have reduced the vibration
Quaglia and Sorli model without regard to the heat transfer and the
transmitted from the irregular road by the method of full vehicle
air mass in the pipes is preferred.
matching, semi-active suspension full-state feedback strategies
optimization or six-point powertrain mounting optimal design. By the
The ride comfort test can be carried out on a Road Test Simulator
method of setting up a laboratory test, Ahmadian et al. [4] indicated
(RTS) in a laboratory environment. The drive file is transferred from
that the panhard rod cab suspension system had a good performance
the computer to the servo-hydraulic controller as the input signals. As
when the cab subjected to heavy inputs, while the B-post vertical and
a result, the actuators of the RTS are controlled to reproduce the
for-aft accelerations increased due to the coupling between the cab's
axles' accelerations and the displacements between the axle and the
frame. Moreover, the effect of the powertrain can also be considered
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by a special instrument. Xu et al. [11] described the road test constant height between the vehicle frame and the cab, by exhausting
simulation process for vehicles on four or six degree-of-freedom RTS the air from the air spring chamber to the atmosphere or injecting the
for durability testing. It makes sure that the excitation input is air from the air source to the air spring chamber. It mainly controls
repeatable in the RTS method, based on which the performance of the pressure in the air chamber to adjust its variable loads. It's worth
different designs can be compared easily. It can largely reduce the test noting that the leveling valve will not work when the vehicle is under
time and cost. As lacking of the instruments such as the servo- random excitation, because there is no enough time for the air
hydraulic controller system and the displacement sensors, the ride flowing through the leveling valve.
comfort test is conducted on the road and the acceleration of the
measurements is acquired.
In this paper, the vehicle's ride comfort test on the road is described. The
mathematical modeling of the air spring is introduced. The air spring is
integrated into the cab suspension system by co-simulation of the
ADAMS and AMESim. Under the random excitation, the seat track's Figure 2. The main components of the cab pneumatic suspension
vertical acceleration acquired by the co-simulation method considering
the dynamic stiffness characteristic of the air spring, as well as the The air spring is usually built as a force-displacement spline in
method which treats the air spring as a force-deflection spline, are practical engineering application, but the stiffness characteristic here
compared with that of the ride comfort test. The purpose of this paper is is only affected by the deflection of the air spring. In fact, because of
to validate the air spring model and the integrated method is more the existing of the hysteresis which is mainly affected by the heat
accurate than that of which treats the air spring as a force-deflection transfer, the variation of the effective area and the flowing of the air
spline without considering its dynamic stiffness characteristic. mass in the pipe [10], the stiffness should be closely related to the
amplitude and the frequency of the dynamic excitation. This section
mainly described the mathematical modeling of the air spring as well
The Ride Comfort Test as the test and simulation of the air spring's stiffness.
The ride comfort test on the road is carried out to measure the
vehicle's vibration for the further modeling and evaluating. The
instrumentation system includes acceleration transducers, GPS
Mathematical Description of Air Spring
velocity transducer (VBox), data acquisition system (DATaRec 4) The rolling diaphragm air spring is composed of the cover plate, the
with the software (Head Recorder) and the power inverter. The rubberized fabric chamber with thin, flexible walls and the piston.
transducers are used to measure the acceleration of the frame, the cab, The chamber will inflate and contact with the cover plate upper as the
the seat track and the driver seat at different velocities. They are fixed inner pressure increasing, and it will result in variable effective area.
as shown in Figure 1. The fabric angles and the fabric layers are important factors that
affect the air spring's characteristic. And the different characteristic
stiffness can be acquired by the design of the piston shape, such as
the cylindrical or the contoured piston.
In fact, the gas chamber allows the deflection and the force transfer in
three directions. In this work, the vertical dynamic of the air spring is
focused on. The air spring is modeled as a force element and the mass
is not considered. The force mainly generated by the inner air
pressure acting on the effective area, which can be expressed as
(1)
Modeling of Cab Air Spring Suspension where a0, a1, a2, a3 are the polynomial coefficients. And the height h
The pneumatic system of the cab air spring suspension is mainly is changed with respect to the time t, i.e., h=h(t).
composed of the air spring, the leveling valve, the pipes and the air
source, as shown in figure 2. The leveling valve is used to maintain a
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It is difficult to conduct an experiment of measuring the air chamber's The bottom of the air spring is fixed on the support where the
volume with respect to the height h(t). In many studies [10, 12], the real-time force can be measured by the force sensor. The upper of the
Ae(h) is used to approximate the derivative of the entire volume with air spring is fixed with the actuator, the motion of which is controlled
respect to h(t). We thus have: by different input signals. There is a displacement sensor installing on
the actuator to measure its real-time displacement.
Therefore, after the preload is applied on the air spring, either the
(3) static displacement signals or the sinusoidal displacement signals
with different amplitudes and frequencies can be vertically applied to
where the V0, h0 are the initial volume, the initial height and the the air spring by the actuator. The pressure, the vertical force and
current height of the air chamber, respectively. V1(h) is the current deflection of the air spring are acquired to validate the air spring
entire volume of the air chamber. dynamic model built.
(6)
As the same as bench test, the different signals are applied on the excitation under the initial absolute pressure 7.5 bar, as the pressure
piston of the air spring vertically in the analysis, according to the conforms to the air spring’s practical working condition. It is obvious
working condition. The force and displacement of the air spring are that the result in analysis has a good consistency with that of the
output to validate the model. The parameters of the air spring are as bench test and it is not accurate enough for the air spring’s stiffness
shown in the table 1, the initial height h0, initial volume V0 and the characteristics to be only considered as a force-deflection spline.
initial effective area Ae0 are acquired from the technical drawing, the
air spring type is Sachs PS30/13×64A2. The pipe length Lp and
diameter dp can be measured easily. And the chamber volume Co-Simulation with the Cab Multi-Body
gradient dV/dz and the effective area gradient dAe / dz are calculated Dynamic Model
as the process variable in the model. This section mainly describes the co-simulation method in which the
dynamic air spring is integrated into the cab suspension system. And
Table 1. Parameters of air spring model the analysis between the co-simulation method and the method which
treated the air spring as a force-deflection spline is compared.
acceleration data are measured at the speed of 70 km/h in the road simulation agree well with the bench test. It reveals that the dynamic
test above. The displacement input signal of the left front actuator is stiffness characteristic of the air spring is affected by the amplitude
shown as Figure 8. and frequency of the excitation.
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Contact Information
Yunqing Zhang
Center for Computer-Aided Design
School of Mechanical Science & Engineering
Huazhong University of Science & Technology
Wuhan, Hubei 430074, P.R. China
Tel (Fax): +86-27-87543973
[email protected]
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (11172108, 11472112). This financial support is
gratefully acknowledged.
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