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Design and Adaptive Control of a Lab-based, Tire-coupled, Quarter-carSuspension Test Rig for the Accurate Re-creation of Vehicle Response
byJustin D. LangdonThesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Universityin partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of ScienceInMechanical Engineering________________________Dr. Steve Southward, Chairman________________________Dr. John Ferris________________________Dr. Corina SanduJanuary 31, 2007Danville, VAKeywords: quarter-car, test rig, adaptive inverse control, system identification,suspension, vehicle response replication
 
Design and Adaptive Control of a Lab-based, Tire-coupled, Quarter-carSuspension Test Rig for the Accurate Re-creation of Vehicle Response
 byJustin LangdonDr. Steve Southward, ChairmanAbstractThe purpose of this study has two parts directed toward a common goal. First, a state-of-the-art quarter-car test platform has been designed and constructed to offer increasedtesting flexibility at a reasonable cost not found commercially. With this new test rigcompleted, the second objective is a proof-of-concept evaluation of a well knownadaptive control algorithm applied to this new quarter-car test rig for the purpose of replicating the dynamic suspension response, such as a response that was recorded duringa road test. A successful application of this control algorithm on the quarter-car rig is thenecessary first step toward its application on an 8-post test rig for a direct comparison tocurrent practices.Before developing a new test rig, the current state-of-the-art in quarter-car rigswas first evaluated as well as indoor vehicle testing in general. Based on these findings, alist of desired functional requirements was defined for this new design to achieve. Thenew test rig was built and evaluated to determine how these goals were met and what thenext steps would be to improve the rig. The study then focused on evaluating controlpolicies used for reproducing dynamic responses on vehicle road simulators such as 4-post and 7-post shaker rigs. A least-mean squares (LMS) adaptive algorithm isintroduced and applied first in software using a linear two-mass quarter-car model, andthen to the actual hardware-in-the-loop quarter-car rig.The results of the study show that the resulting quarter-car test rig design is quiteflexible in its ability to test a multitude of suspension designs and also its ability toaccommodate new hardware in the future such as a body loaders. The study confirmsthat this particular implementation of the LMS algorithm is a viable option for replicatingtest vehicle response on an indoor quarter-car test rig. Thus, a future study to comparethe use of this algorithm to the current industry standard batch processing method ispossible.
 
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Acknowledgments
I would like to start by thanking my advisor, Dr. Steve Southward. I trulyappreciate his willingness to bring me in given the circumstances when I first arrived inDanville. Dr. Southward’s guidance during this research was invaluable. Also, thehockey games and track data collection at VIR were fun. I want to thank Drs. CharlieReinholtz and Harry Robertshaw and also Bruce Billian for helping to guide me throughadversity in graduate school. I would also like to thank Dr. Bob West for letting me sit inon some FEA classes to get back up to speed on some modeling techniques.Many thanks go to Synergy Racing for their generous donation of a Porschesuspension for this and future research. Particularly thanks to Cole Scrogham, GregJones and Richard Binzer for allowing us the time to discuss the project and gain insightinto Grand-Am Cup race cars. Also thanks to Dr. Christoph Leser of MTS for theextremely insightful phone conversation. His knowledge of indoor vehicle testing wasextremely valuable. I would especially like to thank Jim Belcher at JTEKT AutomotiveTennessee – Morristown, Inc. for allowing me to VPN into their network to use alicensed copy of Solidworks. Also thanks for being so flexible by allowing me to cometo work only when off-time at school would allow it. The real-world experience wasinvaluable. Without your help in both respects this project would have moved muchmore slowly and difficult.I would like to thank my high school math and physics teacher Coach GeneQuarles. You were an incredible influence not just as a teacher but as an all-around greatexample of what makes a quality person in life. For those that don’t know, you letteredin three major sports in college, obtained a Master’s degree and served your country.Thanks for the lessons in calculus and in life.I would like to thank all of my friends at home and at school for being there alongthe way. Tom, Jimmie, Wilbur and Matt at home, you guys provided the wrenching,gaming, beer drinking, shenanigans-type of fun, which was a great escape from beingstuck in an apartment in Danville. Here’s to more in the future. I also want to thank allof my friends at school. The jam-session gatherings were awesome. I expect more in thefuture.
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