The wheel suspension assembly for a motor vehicle connects the architecture of the sprung vehicle mass to the architecture of the non-sprung and rotating tire-wheel assembly. Furthermore, the wheel suspension assembly controls the motion pattern of the tire-wheel assembly with respect to the external impact from the road as well as to the internal impact from the propelling, braking and steering as initiated by the driver through the engine-transmission assembly, the braking system, the steering system and the wheel suspension assemblies.
The overall controllability in terms of steering, propelling and braking of the vehicle is closely related to the motion pattern of the four tire-wheel assemblies. The motion of the four tire-wheel assemblies are independently controlled by the respective wheel suspension. The four tire-wheel assemblies constitute the un-sprung mass connected to the vehicle's sprung mass to which the driver is connected. During the vehicle's motion of combined forward running (surge), bounce, sway/veer, roll, pitch and yaw, these motion patterns and their time derivatives in all directions should be controlled such that a normal driver's capability of control enables the entire synthesized vehicle motion pattern to be fully controlled in a secure manner. To be noted is the fact that useful control signals and disturbing noise are superimposed and in addition to this, the objectively measurable disturbing noise frequently overpowers the useful control signal.
Vehicles are complex systems with human beings in the control loop. Although the dynamic behavior of vehicles in a response to drivers' input may be simulated or measured, this understanding does not determine the issue of ‘good handling’ unless complemented with the understanding of how human beings work as control systems and how a driver's brain works in vehicle control.
It is therefore important to provide a system mechanization with a synthesized operation of the communication loop defined as “fail operate, fail operate, fail safe” normally used in safety critical systems such as controlled configured airplanes. This requires a communication loop of quadruple redundancy and a dissimilar back up system, where the command media in our case is the entire vehicle-suspension architecture. The redundancy in the command media is here to be seen as flows of information of superimposed layers of power spectra where the driver's sensor.' system has capability to sense concurrently ongoing motion patterns in a similar way as our eye concurrently can perceive several colors or our ears concurrently can perceive several tones in music.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,421,606, discloses a wheel suspension assembly for the suspension of a steerable front wheel of a motor vehicle. This known wheel suspension assembly comprises a wheel spindle housing, supporting a wheel spindle on which the front wheel is mountable, and a frame structure connected to the vehicle body. A spring link extends between and connects the frame structure and the wheel spindle housing. The spring link carries a vehicle spring. A first upper control arm link extends between and connects the frame structure and the wheel spindle housing. A second upper control arm link extends between and connects the frame structure and the wheel spindle housing. The first upper control arm link and the second upper control arm link intersect each other seen in the vertical direction.
EP-A-316 711 discloses a wheel suspension comprising a frame structure, a wheel spindle housing, a spring link, a first control link, a second control link, a first camber link and a second camber link. The purpose of the wheel suspension is to improve the stiffness. The higher stiffness is achieved by means of the shown configuration including the intersecting two upper camber links. The links form a lower triangular link having a lower swing axis and an upper triangular link having an upper swing axis, wherein the swing axes form a relatively large angle with each other.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds