Proceedings of the 8th
World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation
June 21-25 2011, Taipei, Taiwan
Optimization of Suspension Design Based on Evolution
Algorithm for a Novel E-bike*
Chih-Jer Lin, Po-Ting Lin and Shen-Kai Yu
Graduate Institute of Automation Technology
National Taipei University of Technology
Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
cjlin@ntut.edu.tw*
Abstract - The objective of this study is to develop a novel
design of electric bike. The authors used some engineering approach
packages in this study to analyze kinetic and dynamics of the system.
The newly developed suspension design of the E-bike will also be
incorporated using ADAMS and BikeSim simulation into the design
consideration of suspension. To improve the ride comfort and driving
safety of the E-bike, an optimization problem is formulated based on
the comfort and safety cost function. To obtain the optimal
performance for the proposed suspension, evolution algorithms (EAs)
are studied to obtain the optimal suspension parameters.
Index Terms –evolution algorithm, suspension design, Adams.
I. INTRODUCTION
Because of the unavoidable depletion in the fossil fuel
resources and the impending greenhouse effect on the global
warming on earth, the use of green energy, such as electric
energy, as the power source on transportation vehicle has
become ever important. In Taiwan, the demand of using light-
weight commuting vehicles in the urban area to reduce the air
pollution and the traffic is more prominent. The goal of this
study is to obtain optimal suspension parameters for a novel
two-wheeler electric bike (E-bike). The computer-aided
design engineering using Solidworks packages is adopted to
design novel suspensions of the E-bike in this study. In
addition, the full bike model established using Adams is used
to analyze both the performance of kinematics and dynamics
of the E-bike.
The hub motors are the newly and popular driving devices for
the E-bikes recently. Because the ratio between the sprung and
un-sprung masses for hob motors’ driving is different from the
conventional motorcycle, a great attention on the vibration
suppression of the E-bike has been significantly increasing.
Vehicle suspensions carry the vehicle bodies and transmit
forces between bodies and road; besides, they are responsible
for driving safety and ride comfort. For driving safety, a
permanent contract between the tires and the road should be
assured to avoid the wheel’s bouncing conditions. For ride
comfort, the suspension is used to filter the undesired
vibrations and shocks which are transmitted from the road.
The suspension systems basically consist of the spring, the
shock absorber and the mechanism. The spring is to carry the
mass and to isolate the body from road disturbances; therefore
*
This work is partially supported by Ministry of Economic Affairs, R.O.C., under Grant #98-EC-17-A-16-S1-127.
978-1-61284-700-9/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
I-Lu Hu
Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering
Da-Yeh University
Changhua 51505, Taiwan, R.O.C.
r9711068@mail.dyu.edu.tw
it contributes to the ride comfort mainly. The damper is used
to dissipate the undesired energy and to avoid the wheel
oscillations so that it contributes to both driving safety and
ride comfort. Moreover, driving safety and ride comfort
usually conflict with each other, so trade-off between the
driving safety and ride comfort is necessary. Therefore, it is
difficult to select the damping coefficients manually. Owing to
this difficulty, there was a feasible method to tune of race car
suspensions via the seven post rig. It has been used to
optimize the response of the car by tuning of the dampers. [1]
However, they did not discuss the interaction between driving
safety and ride comfort.
For the suspension systems, they are usually divided into
three types of suspension and are called passive, active and
semi-active. The passive suspension systems built of springs
and dampers have serious limitations; for the driving safety to
avoid the wheel’s bouncing, fixed suspension settings have to
cope with a wide variety of road conditions and store or
dissipate energy at a specified rate. Fischer and Isermann
proposed the performance indices for ride comfort and driving
safety to analyse the performance of the suspension. [2] Using
body accelerometers, wheel accelerometers, and suspension
deflection sensors, the indices can be obtained experimentally.
In order to study the ride quality and vibration characteristic
of the bike model, many researches discussed and derived two
types of dynamic models, such as the quarter-vehicle model
and the 4DOF vehicle model.[3][4]
Evolutionary algorithms (EAs) are stochastic optimization
techniques based on the idea of natural evolution and they can
be mainly distinguished into genetic algorithms (GA) and
evolution strategies (ES). Genetic algorithm is a search
process based on natural selection and it was developed by
Holland [5]. GA operates on a binary level and are very
similar to nature, where the information is coded in four
different based on the DNA. Nowadays, GA has been a
breakthrough to optimization theory because of their
versatility, performance, and ease of use. It is based on the
ideas associated with the natural evolution of species, where
the ‘‘fittest” organisms in a population survive, passing
(through their genes) to the next generation, and so forth.
Evolutionary strategies were developed by Rechenberg and
Schwefel in Germany during the 1960s [6]. Being contrast to
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GA, ES uses the parameters which are coded as they are; for B. Testing road and tire model
example, continuous parameters are coded as real numbers. [7] To establish the testing road profiles similar to real roads
In this study, to improve the ride comfort and driving safety for our studies, the testing road profile is designed as Eq. (1)
for newly developed suspension of the E-bike, the genetic and it is described in Fig. 2.
algorithm is studied to obtain the optimal parameters of the z
target vehicle. Before validating the new design via real
implementation, we use the full-bike model using BikeSim
software to analyse and simulate the novel designs.
A x
II. CAE MODELING FOR THE NOVEL E-BIKE λ
Fig. 2
A. The Adams model of the novel E-bike
2 (1)
To develop a novel feasible E-bike, CAE (Computer z  A sin( x)
Aided Engineering) will be utilized to ensure the strength 
while keep the weight and cost low. On suspension system, Consider the forward velocity of the bike is V and the front
the ride criterion will be investigated and the suspension suspension affected by the road irregularity, represented in Eq.
model will be set up to find the influence of the suspension (2) and the road profile is described in Fig. 2. The harmonic
parameters. The suspension system is designed and assembled motion of the front tire can be defined as follows.
in Solidworks and then the CAD model of full bike is V (2)
zr  A sin 2 ( )t
transferred to a CAE model of Adams. The bike dynamics is 
simulated using Adams/Car package (Mechanical Dynamics Therefore, f  V /  represents the frequency of the motion
Inc.) and Fig. 1 illustrates one of designs for the novel E-bike. imposed on the suspension system by the road irregularities.
In addition, For Adams, there are five tire models, wh ich can
be applied in simulations; they are Fiala, UA, Delft, Smithers
and User defined. In this study, the Fiala model is used for the
following simulations.

C. The half-bike model

Fig. 1 The novel E-bike Model established in Adams environment.
TABLE I
KF (kN/m) KR(kN/m) CF(Ns/m) CR(Ns/m)
21.2 24.52 360 500~1000
The CAD model using Solidworks is transferred into
Adams via parasolid format. For the E-bike, the body of the
bike is made up of aluminium and the bike body’s weight and
the rider’s weight are set as 73 and 75 (kg), respectively. The
wheelbase is 1.21 (m) and the caster angle is 25°. The front is
designed as the telescopic fork and it is made up of two
telescopic sliders which run along the interior of two fork
tubes. The up side down telescopic fork is used in this design
where the two fork tubes fastened to the steering head and the
two slider tubes on the lower end; therefore, it has more
flexional and torsional stiffness. The rear suspension is
composed of two swing arms with two spring-damper units,
placed on both sides. Table 1 describes the initial suspension
setup; KF and KR are the front and rear spring coefficients for
two forks, respectively; CF and CR are the front and rear
damper coefficients for two forks, respectively. In this study,
the optimal solution of CR will be determined and discussed
according to the following performance criteria.
The vertical dynamics of the suspension system is most
commonly investigated on the quarter-car model or called the
half-bike model. To describe correctly the roll and pitch
motion of the bike, some researchers extend it to a full bike
model.[6] In this study, a half-bike model is studied to obtain
the optimal damping for the rear suspension at first. In the
model of Fig. 3, ms denotes a half of the body mass, mu is the
mass of the wheel with an axle, k s is the stiffness of the
spring, b  CR is the damping coefficient of a variable rear
shock absorber and k u is the tire stiffness.
Zs
ks
Zu
ku
Fz Zr
Fig. 3 The one-dimensional half-bike model
The equations of motion for the system are as follows
ms zs   k s ( z s  zu )  b( zs  zu ) (3)

mu zu  ku ( zs  zu )  b( zs  zu )  ku ( zr  zu )
, or in the state-space form.
X  AX  B  z r
(4)

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, where the state vector is X  [ z s zs zu zu ]T , which describes the lines of maximum tolerable levels for
different durations of the vibration exposure. Therefore, we
 0 1 0 0  will focus on the sensitive frequency of vibration for the
 k s b ks b   0 
 m   ,  0 . human body in the following simulations.
ms ms ms  
A s
 B   0 
 k0 0
b
0
 k s  ku
1 
b  ku 
 s    
 mu mu mu mu   mu 
The damping coefficient of the modulated damper can vary
among the different damping levels. In this study, our aim is
to obtain the optimal damping according to different
performance indexes, such as ride comfort or driving safety.
III. OPTIMIZATION FOR HALF-BIKE’S SUSPENSION DESIGN
USING EVOLUTION ALGORITHM

A. Performance indices for ride comfort and driving safety

To study the optimal damping coefficients under the
specified wavelengths and speeds, the performance indices Fig. 4 Discomfort threshold for different exposure times (ISO 2631 standard)
(PIs) for ride comfort and driving safety must be defined first.
On one hand, the ride comfort of the car is influenced by the C. Reduced stiffness of the suspension
suspension parameters, such as damping coefficients and For the half-bike dynamics study, it is appropriate to
stiffness coefficient, and the speed of the bike. On the other reduce the real suspension to equivalent suspension, which is
hand, the wavelength and amplitude of the road roughness represented by two vertical spring-damper units that connect
affects bike motion; however, how these motions affect ride the unsprung masses to the sprung mass. The equivalent
quality and driving safety is an interesting problem. To stiffness is called wheel rate, which represents the vertical
investigate the ride comfort, the acceleration of the body is force per unit vertical displacement at the location along the
usually an obvious quantity for determining quantitative spindle corresponding to the wheel centreline. We can obtain
values of driving comfort; the effective value of the the wheel rates K F , K R for the front and rear suspensions
normalized acceleration can be defined as: [2]
2 which are described in Fig.5 as follows.
1 T  Zs  (5) KF
T t 0  g 
Zs ,rel ,eff    dt K F  (7a)
sin 12
2
Driving safety results from a harmonious suspension design in D  (7b)
K R  K R   1   sin  2
terms of wheel stiffness, suspension springing, steering and  D2 
braking and it is reflected in an optimal dynamic behaviour of To verify the relations in Eqs. (7a) and (7b), the wheel rate
the bike; typically, the tire load variation for the road contact is also computed according to that the vertical force divides
is used for determining quantitative values of driving safety. the vertical displacement along the spindle corresponding to
Therefore, the effective values of the normalized safety index the wheel centreline in Adams. The results obtained by Eqs.
can be defined as follows. [2] (7a) and (7b) are compared from the ones by Adams as
 Fz ,dyn 
2
described in Table II. The error between these two methods
1 T (6)
Fzdyn,rel ,eff 
T t 0  Fz ,stat  dt
 may be due to the measurement error of the angle at the initial
  state. Therefore, the dynamics’ coefficients and model can be
, where Fz denotes the contact force between the wheel and summarized as Fig. 6. Because the frequency of the imposed
the road in Fig. 3. Fz ,dyn is the variation of Fz and Fz , stat is the motion affects the ride comfort, the two degree of freedom,
half-bike model can allow us to discuss and obtain the most
static value of Fz . Using this performance index, the optimal appropriate value of the damping coefficients. The ride
damping for ride comfort and driving safety under the comfort and driving safety relation between the vibration
vibration due to road irregularity can be obtained as follows. frequency and the damping coefficients are discussed as
follows.
B. Discomfort threshold for road excitation TABLE II
To evaluate the rider’s comfort index, it is important to
concentrate on the sensitive frequency of vibration for the Spring coefficient of the Wheel rate (kN/m) Wheel rate (kN/m)
absorber (kN/m)
human body. For rider’s discomfort threshold, the influence of (Eq. 7(a), 7(b)) (Adams)
acceleration is larger than displacement, especially sensitive to KF =21.2 KF  25.8 KF  24.8
the RMS value of acceleration. The rider feels more
discomfort in a range of frequencies from 4Hz to 8Hz as KR =24.52 KR  31.8 KR  32.7
shown in Fig.4. This figure shows the ISO 2631 standard

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 CE/CC =2

Fig. 5 the geometry of the front and rear suspension for the E-bike

CE/CC =1
CR=30-500 (N*s/m)

Fig. 7 PI response for CE=100~500 with CE/CC =1~2 at 4Hz

CE/CC =2

Fig. 6 The suspension parameters for the full-bike Adams model

D. The influence of the damping coefficients for the

frequency response
Consider the rear suspension of the bike with the
following characteristics: sprung mass ms  72.78, sprung
mass mu  18.9 (kg); wheel rate k s  31.8 and tire stiffness CE/CC =1
ku  200(kN / m) . Because the vibration in a range of
frequencies from 4Hz to 8Hz make the rider feel more
discomfort according to ISO 2631 standard. On one hand, the Fig.8 PI response for CE=60~150 with CE/CC =1~2 at 6Hz
following studies are discussed on the sensitive vibration Case III. Consider zr has the vibration frequency of 8Hz with
frequency of 4, 6 and 8 (Hz) for the human body. On the A=0.002 (m), the damping ratio CE/CC are also discussed from
other hand, the ratio of damping coefficient for extension and 1 to 2 with the interval of 0.1. Figure 9 shows the response of
compression of the damper are also discussed in the three these two performance indices for the extension damping
cases. The damping ratio for extension and compression of the CE=30~190 (N-s/m) and the cross mark point shows the initial
damper is defined as CE/CC, where CE is the extension state for CE=70(N-s/m). Different from the Cases I and II, the
damping coefficient and CC is the compression damping best performance for driving safety is the damper with
coefficient. CE/CC=2 at 8Hz. However, the damping ratio CE/CC=1 has
Case I. Consider zr has the vibration frequency of 4Hz with the best performance for ride comfort at frequency of 8Hz.
amplitude A=0.002 (m); Figure 7 shows the response of these
two PIs for the extension damping CE=100~500 (N-s/m) and
the damping ratio CE/CC from 1 to 2 with the interval of 0.1; CE/CC =2
the cross mark point shows the initial state for CE=100(N-
s/m). The simulation results show that the damper with the
damping ratio CE/CC=1 has the best performance for the half-
bike model at frequency of 4Hz.
Case II. Consider zr has the vibration frequency of 6Hz with
A=0.002 (m); Figure 8 shows the response of these two
performance indices for the extension damping CE=70~150
(N-s/m) and the damping ratio CE/CC are also discussed from
1 to 2 with the interval of 0.1; the cross mark point shows the CE/CC =1
initial state for CE=60(N-s/m). The simulation results also
show that the damper with the damping ratio CE/CC=1 has the
optimal performance for the half-bike model at frequency of Fig. 9 PI response for CE=30~190 with CE/CC =1~2 at 8Hz
6Hz.

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 From the above case studies, the ride comfort is usually full bike model at human sensitive frequency of 4Hz
contrary to the driving safety. For the cases with 2Hz road according to the parameters described in Table VI for the rear
exciting, the damper with smaller damping has better driving suspension’s damping ratio CE/CC=1~10.
safety but worse ride comfort. However, this situation changes
for the case with 6-8Hz road exciting; the damper with smaller
damping has worse driving safety but better ride comfort. To
obtain the optimal damping coefficient for different cost
function, the evolution algorithm (EA) is used to obtain the
optimal according to different PI. Table 3 shows the optimal
damping coefficients for the PI of driving safety described in
Eq. (6). Table 4 shows the optimal damping coefficients of
the PI of ride comfort described in Eq. (7). From these cases,
we can find some facts as follows: (a) the vibration response
at 4Hz is dominated for the frequency range 4-8Hz; (b) there
exists conflict between driving safety and ride comfort; (c) the
performance is related to the vibration frequency. To find a
compromise between driving safety and ride comfort, we
define a new PI as follows. Fig. 10 The full-bike model

PI 3  w1  Zs ,rel ,eff  w2  Fzdyn, rel ,eff (8)   

z  k F  z F  z  a   cF zF  z  a  k R  z R  z  b   cR zR  z  b
ms  
, where w1  0.5, w2  0.5 are the weighting factors. Table 5   
J  k R b  z R  z  b   cR b zR  z  b  k F a  z F  z  a   cF a zF  z  a 
shows the optimal solution for the cost function of PI 3 , the 
zF  kT  yF  z F   cT  y F  zF   k F  z F  z  a   cF zF  z  a
mF  
resulting data shows that there exists a compromise between 
z R  kT  yR  z R   cT  y R  zR   k R  z R  z  b   cR zR  z  b
mR  
the safety and ride comfort. (9)
TABLE III The optimal damping coefficient for driving safety
, where ms denotes the body mass; mF and mR are the front
4Hz 6Hz 8Hz
Extension 181 126 172 and rear suspension mass of the wheel with mechanism;
Compression 181 126 86 k F and k R are the stiffness of the spring for the front and rear
Fzdyn ,rel ,eff 0.768376 0.276473 0.352434 suspension; kT is the tire stiffness; of the spring for the front
TABLE IV. The optimal damping coefficient for ride comfort
and rear suspension;  is the pitch angle. CF and CR are the
4Hz 6Hz 8Hz
Extension 296 94 63
damping coefficients for the front and rear suspensions.
Compression 296 94 63 TABLE VI. The optimal damping coefficient for ride comfort
Zs ,rel ,eff 1.118347 0.739069 0.722909 ms mF mR KF KR KT
118.5 12.9 18.9 25.8 31.86 200
TABLE V. The optimal damping coefficient for ride comfort
kg kN/m
4Hz 6Hz 8Hz CF CR
Extension 220 113 106
Compression 220 113 106 c1c c1e c2c c2e
Fzdyn ,rel ,eff 0.769925 0.277486 0.379448 80~650 800~6733 80~650 800~6733
N-s/m
Z s , rel , eff 1.120077 0.739644 0.727229
L a b θ0 J
1210 735 475 1.93 20.3
IV. OPTIMIZATION FOR FULL-BIKE’S SUSPENSION DESIGN mm degree kg-m2
USING EVOLUTION ALGORITHM B. The damping optimization for BikeSim dynamics with
The optimization for half-bike suspension design using EA Simulink based on EA
has been discussed in Section III. However, the time response
To obtain the optimal damping coefficients for the full-bike
for the full-bike model may be different from the half-bike
model to meet the actual requirement, we establish the
model. Therefore, BikeSim and Matlab Simulink are used to
dynamics of the full-bike model using BikeSim. BikeSim is a
study the EA optimization for the full-bike model as follows.
tool specifically designed to simulate the dynamic behavior of
motorcycles and scooters for engineers who needs to design a
A. The simulation of full-bike model for different damping
novel model promptly and it includes environmental inputs,
ratio
such as aerodynamics, road geometry and friction. Therefore,
To discuss the influence of the damping coefficients for the simulation via BikeSim is more realistic than the full-bike
the front and rear suspension, the dynamics of the full-bike model in Eq. (8). We can formulate a constrained optimization
model can be described as follows. To understand the problem to obtain the optimal damping coefficients for the
performance indices of the full bike model, we simulate the front and rear suspension of this novel bike as follows.

655
 Min PI  w1  Zs ,rel ,eff  w2  Fzdyn ,rel ,eff (10) 1400
c1e ,c1c ,c 2 e ,c 2 c C1c
C1e
1200
800   c1e  6733
C2c
C2e
 80   c1c   650  1000

subject to    

800   c 2e  6733 800

     
 80  c 2c   650  600

In this case study, we integrate Simulink with Adams to 400

solve this optimization problem, where the velocity of the bike
is 45km/hr and the amplitude of the testing road is 20mm. The 200

vibration frequency is about 4.5Hz when the bike endures the 0

4.5Hz’s vibration. Figure 11 shows the block diagram of the
BikeSim model and the Simulink is used to change the
original damping. We used the binary-coding EA encoded in
20-bit to solve this optimization with the following setup: the
crossover rate is 0.7, the mutation rate of 0.02, the population
size is 90 and the number of generations is 70.
Fig. 11 The Adams full-bike model intergrated with the Simulink code
Using the EA to solve this problem, we should define the
fitness function or performance index at first. Consider ride
comfort and driving safety have the same priority; the
weighting factor can be designed as w1  0.5, w2  0.5 . Fig. 12
describes the PI with respect to generation; the EA searching
process converges when the generation increases. Fig. 13
shows the history of the best damping coefficients at each
generation. The final optimal solution is as follows:
c1e  944.5, c1c  144.7, c2 e  852.8 and c2 c  236.4( Ns  m).
0.8
0.75
0.
PI
0.65
0.6
0.5
0 10 20 30 40
Generation
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Generation
Fig. 13 The optimal damping parameters using GA at each generation
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we developed the novel suspension design
of the E-bike and studied the influence of damping
coefficients on the ride comfort and driving safety at three
different frequencies. For rider’s discomfort threshold, the
influence of acceleration is larger than displacement,
especially sensitive to the RMS value of acceleration.
According to ISO 2631, the rider feels more discomfort at the
range of frequencies from 4Hz to 8Hz. The simulation results
of the half-bike model show that the 4Hz’s vibration is
dominated in the range from 4Hz to 8Hz. Therefore, we used
the binary-coding EA to solve the optimization of damping
coefficients at 4Hz. To take care of ride comfort and driving
safety of the E-bike at the same time, the optimization
problem was formulated via the full-bike Bikesim simulation
with Simulink to deal with the multi-objective cost functions,
which is evaluated using the comfort and safety indices. The
resulting simulation shows that the EA can obtain the optimal
damping parameters to improve the ride comfort and driving
safety at the same time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Ministry of Economic
Affairs, R.O.C., under Grant 98-EC-17-A-16-S1-127.
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Fig. 12 The convergence of the fitting function for the optimization problem

656