Analysis of vehicle suspension dynamics comprising of nonlinear components

Dynamics of vehicle suspensions play a very crucial role in the behaviour and control of a vehicle, therefore resulting in the improved ride comfort and the enhanced road holding performance. As passive suspensions are more commonly used because of their simplicity and lesser complexities, therefore this paper deals with the dynamic analyses on the harmonics of a nonlinear quarter car suspension systems. F.F.T. (Fast Fourier Transform) are used to study the effect of different frequency ratios on the harmonics of the suspension system. A quarter car suspension comprising of a spring having a cubic nonlinearity and a nonlinear damper is studied by exciting it harmonically and analysing the harmonics obtained in the frequency vs amplitude curves. The variation in harmonic intensities is studied at the different values of exciting frequency and the vehicle nonlinear dynamic behaviour is explored with the help of curves and plots obtained using Matlab.