Distributed control of vehicle suspension system based on nonlinear energy sink

Vehicle riding comfort is deteriorated not only by low-order but also by high-order resonance in the suspension system. This paper proposes to arrange the nonlinear energy sink (NES) on the tire to suppress high-order resonance. Two modal resonances can be controlled by a vibration control scheme of the distributed NESs. A dynamic model of a 2-degree-of-freedom quarter-vehicle (2-DOFQV) suspension system integrated with two NESs is established. Then, the model is analyzed approximately analytically by the harmonic balance method (HBM) and verified numerically. Next, the vibration reduction mechanism of the new suspension system is revealed from the perspective of transferred energy. In addition, the vibration reduction effects of the parameters of two NESs are studied. The results of the study show that high-order modal resonance in the suspension system can be effectively controlled by placing an NES of small mass on the tire. Thus, the novelty of this paper is to propose a distributed control strategy for the vehicle suspension system, which can reduce the high-order resonance at the cost of a small mass.