Design and Development of Quarter Car Suspension Test Rig Model and It’s Simulation

For this modern fast pace world transportation being the backbone of society, the fact of luxury and comfort has also become of utmost interest for many people. The competition in automobile industries put the standards on higher level concerned about vehicle suspension as it is directly related to human health and comfort.

As the vehicle suspension is concerned, it varies from one vehicle to another and from one application to another. These various suspension systems are designed accordingly with the desired effects and performances. The testing and calibrating facilities for these suspension systems are available at their manufacturers and some purposefully established organizations only. This project is hence carried so as to develop a simplified and cost effective suspension system testing setup. The setup is made as a quarter car setup, the reduced model from a full car, to reduce the cost of development and the complications in its design and manufacturing.

The work involved was from selection of suspension system to final readings and analyses. The McPherson strut independent suspension system was selected, as nowadays it is being most popular suspension system in passenger cars. The procedure for development was analytical as well as experimental. Hence the initial mathematical model was developed and the analytical results were taken on Matlab 10, as an analytical solver. In later stages the experimental setup is developed and the actual readings were taken for various inputs; finally both experimental and analytical results are compared for reliability of experimental setup.