Dynamic Behavior of the Vehicle Body in an Automobile Equipped with Magnetorheological Dampers

Abstract

The application of magnetorheological (MR) dampers has materially enhanced the safety of both passenger and heavy-duty vehicles. In this framework, the present work introduces a vehicle model—implemented within the MATLAB/Simulink® environment—whose suspension system is equipped with MR dampers, in which vertical and longitudinal dynamics are intrinsically coupled. The MR dampers are characterized by a hyperbolic tangent function incorporating a hysteresis component and are individually regulated via a Sugeno-type fuzzy control schema. Longitudinal tire forces are computed using the Modified Burckhardt model. The principal objective is to evaluate the vehicle-body response while traversing uneven terrain at velocities that engender high base-excitation frequencies. The MR damping system exhibited superior performance in all scenarios compared to conventional linear damping.