Design and test of lateral interconnected hydro-pneumatic ISD suspension

Aim to balance the ride comfort and handling stability of vehicles and improve suspension performance, this paper presents a novel lateral interconnected hydro-pneumatic “inerter-spring-damper” (ISD) suspension integrating a hydro-pneumatic suspension and a fluid inerter, which realizes the lateral connection of the suspension through the inerter. The equivalent mathematical model of the lateral interconnected ISD suspension is established; the 15-degree-of-freedom (DOF) model of the vehicle is built in AMESim, and the key parameters are optimized by genetic algorithm. The response characteristics of the novel hydro-pneumatic ISD suspension and traditional hydro-pneumatic suspension under pulse and random input are comparatively analyzed. The lateral interconnected hydro-pneumatic ISD suspension prototype is developed and tested on the bench. The simulation and test results prove that the proposed new suspension structure has a more effective shock absorption performance than the traditional hydro-pneumatic suspension. Overall, the novel hydro-pneumatic ISD suspension better consider to the ride comfort and handling stability, and the structure is simple, compact, and easy to deploy on practical vehicles.