Multibody simulation and statistical comparison of the linear and progressive rate double wishbone suspension dynamical behavior

Hydro-pneumatic or air suspension might have superior ride quality, yet their severe damage could be too expensive for small-amateur rally teams, difficult, and time-consuming to be solved in the rally service park which has time limitation. Small teams also often struggle to recognize the true performance of their suspension system since full vehicle testing and validation is often performed late, with modest apparatus or direct test by the driver, leading to the riskier and more costly rework when design modification is needed. In this paper, a technique of multibody simulation and statistical comparison for the vehicle suspension systems road holding and ride comfort performance assessment is described, and comparative result towards the linear and progressive rate double wishbone suspension, as the practical case study example of alternative-inexpensive choice in rally car application, by using this technique, is presented. Initially, after the CAD model is obtained by laser-scanning of the real components, both the linear and progressive rate suspension, as well as the test roads, are modeled in MSC ADAMS/View. Data of the tire-road contact force and the vehicle body CM acceleration of both suspensions are then obtained from the simulations, received from MSC ADAMS PostProcessor. Furthermore, statistical analysis in IBM SPSS Statistics is employed to compare the data. The result shows that both types of suspension have no significant superiority to each other in terms of road holding (p-value of 0.154) and ride comfort (p-value of 0.248) attributes. Therefore, the conventional, linear rate suspension system would be the best choice for the application in the lower classes of rally since the absence of the additional linkages would offer better serviceability as well as lower the manufacturing and maintenance costs.