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Vibration Analysis of an Experimental Suspension System Using Artificial

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Article  in  Journal of scientific and industrial research · July 2009

DOI: 10.4271/2009-01-0734

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Journal of Scientific & Industrial Research
522
Vol. 68, June 2009, pp. 522-529 J SCI IND RES VOL 68 JUNE 2009

Vibration analysis of an experimental suspension system using artificial neural

networks
Sahin Yildirim1* and Ikbal Eski2
1
Mechanical Engineering Department, 2Mechatronics Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering,
Erciyes University, Kayseri, 38039, Turkey

Received 26 June 2007; revised 27 February 2009; accepted 03 March 2009

This study analyzes effects of vibrations on comfort and road holding capability of vehicles as observed in variations of
suspension springs, road roughness etc. Also, design of non-linear experimental car suspension system for ride qualities using
neural networks is presented. Proposed active suspension system has been found more effective in vibration isolation of car
body than linear active suspension system. Proposed neural network predictor could be used in vehicle’s suspension vibration
analysis.

Keywords: Active suspension system, Neural network, Quarter car test-rig, Vehicle vibrations

Introduction controller with fuzzy compensation and H∞ controller have

Vehicle suspension system isolates vehicle body from
vertical accelerations that are generated by variations
in road surface and provides a more comfortable ride
for passengers inside vehicle. Guglielmino & Edge1 used
a servo-driven dry-friction damper in a car suspension
application as a potential alternative to a traditional
viscous damper. Modular adaptive robust control
(MARC) technique, which was applied to design force
loop controller of an electro-hydraulic active suspension
system, has key advantage of adaptation algorithm that
can be designed for explicit estimation convergence2.
Inherited challenge and possible remedies of servo-loop
control design for active suspension systems (ASSs)
have been presented by Shen & Peng3. Methods and
algorithms have been developed to identify control and
diagnose faults in case of suspension systems proposing
a mechatronic vehicle suspension design concept for
active and semi-active suspensions4. Generic control
structure was derived based on physical insight in car
and semi active suspension dynamics without explicitly
using a model5. Choi & Han6 presented vibration control
performance of a semi-active electrorheological seat
suspension system using a robust sliding mode controller.
A functional approximation based adaptive sliding
*Author for correspondence
E-mail: sahiny@erciyes.edu.tr
been developed and successfully employed to control a
quarter-car hydraulic ASS7,8. Gao et al9 presented a load-
dependent controller design approach to solve problem of
multi-objective control for vehicle ASSs by using linear
matrix inequalities. For a quarter-car model, vehicle roll
and pitch motions are ignored and only degrees of freedom
included are vertical motions of sprung mass and unsprung
mass10 .
In this paper, a neural network analyzer is designed to
analyze vibration parameters of an experimental quarter
car suspension test rig system.
Proposed Active Suspension System (ASS)
Important components of proposed ASS (Fig. 1) are
as follows: i) 200 kg metal plate that represents weight of
¼ car model (sprung mass); ii) Tachometer to measure
wheel speeds; iii) Linear variable differential transformer
(LVDT) to measure road displacement, wheel
displacement, and vehicle body displacement, respectively;
iv) A pneumatic actuator to actuate road excitation;
v) Two springs, active damper, a wheel and tyre assembly
(unsprung mass); vi) A compressor to supply air pressure
for pneumatic actuator; vii) A computer for recording
experimental and simulations data; viii) Different type
valves to control pressure of pneumatic actuator; and ix)
Programmable logic controller (PLC) and data acquisition
 YILDIRIM & ESKI: VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF CAR SUSPENSION SYSTEM USING ANN 523

Accelerometer-1
Accelerometer-2
Accelerometer-3
Accelerometer-4
Point 2
Point 3

Point 1
Point 4

Neural Network

Experimental suspension system

Fig. 1—Block diagram of experimental and simulation approaches for proposed ASS of a car

card to control speed of wheel and hydraulic cylinder. ASS test rig with its control loop is shown in Fig. 2.
ASS is described as State variables are defined as7

m s &z&s ( t ) + c s [z& s ( t ) − z& us ( t )] + k s1 , x1 (t ) = z s (t ) − zus (t ) , …(4)

x 2 (t ) = zus (t ) − z r (t ) , …(5)
[z s ( t ) − z us ( t )] + k s 2 [z s ( t ) − z us ( t )] = Fa
x3 ( t ) = z& s (t ) , …(6)
…(1) x4 (t ) = z&us (t ) , …(7)
k s1 + k s 2 = k s , …(2) and
mus&z&us ( t ) + cs[ z& us ( t ) − z& s ( t )] + k s[z us ( t ) − zs ( t )] .  x1( t ) 
+ k t [z us ( t ) − z s ( t )] + c t [z& us ( t ) − z& r ( t )] = −Fa  
 x 2 ( t) 
…(3) x(t ) =  
x 3 (t )  . …(8)
 x ( t) 
where ms is sprung mass, which represents vehicle  4 
chassis; mus is unsprung mass, which represents wheel
assembly; zs and zus are displacements of sprung and where x1(t) represents suspension deflection, x2(t)
unsprung masses, respectively; cs, ks are damping and represents tyre deflection, x3(t) ) represents sprung mass
stiffness of suspension system, respectively; ct and kt are speed, and x4(t) represents unsprung mass speed. Eqs
damping and stiffness of pneumatic tyre; zr is road (1) and (2) can be written as
displacement; F a represents active control force of
suspension system. x& (t ) = A x(t ) +B z(t ) +E u(t ) , …(9)
524 J SCI IND RES VOL 68 JUNE 2009

(1 9 )
(1 2 )
(1 4 )
(1 8 ) (2 1 ) (2 2 )
(1 1 )
(1 3 )

(1 0 )
(1 6 ) (1 7 ) (2 0 ) (2 2 ) (2 3 )
(1 5 )
(9 ) (9 )
(5 )
(2 5 )
(2 2 )

(8 )
(5 ) (2 7 )
(2 6 )

(7 )

(6 )

(5 )

(3 )
+
-

(4 )

(1 )

(2 )

(1 )C o m p resso r an d p ressu re m eter (2 )T ran sd u cer am p lifier (3 )S erv o v alv e (4 )P n eu m atic cy lin d er
(5 )D isp lacem en t tran sd u cer (6 )R o ller (7 )T y re (8 )U n sp ru n g m a ss (9 )S p rin g (1 0 )H y d rau lic cy lin d er
(1 1 )S p ru n g m ass (1 2 )A cc elero m eter (1 3 )A n alo g u e to d ig ital co n v erter (1 4 )C o m p u te r (1 5 ) D ig ital to an alo g u e
co n v erter (1 6 )T h ro ttle v alv e (1 7 )P ressu re tran sd u cer (1 8 )G as sp rin g (1 9 )P ro p o rtio n al am p lifier
(2 0 )P ro p o rtio n al co n tro l v alv e (2 1 ) M ain accu m u lato r (2 2 )C h eck v alv e (2 3 )H y d rau lic filter (2 4 ) H y d rau lic
p u m p (2 5 )B y -p ass v alv e (2 6 ) C o o ler (2 7 )O il tan k

Fig. 2—Layout for ASS test rig

 YILDIRIM & ESKI: VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF CAR SUSPENSION SYSTEM USING ANN 525

 0 0 1 −1   0 
 0 0 0 1   
 k  −1
s cs cs  
A = − 0 −  B= 0 
where  ms ms ms ,  ,
 ks kt cs (c s + ct )   ct 
 − −   mus 
 mus ms ms ms 

 0 
 0 
 
 1 
E= 
 ms  , z (t ) = z& r (t ) , u (t ) = Fa (t ) ,
 1 
− 
 mus 

 0 
 0 0 1 −1   0   0 
 0 0 0 1     
 k  −1
cs cs    1 
− s 0 −   0   m 
x& (t ) =   x (t ) + 
ms ms ms  z& r (t ) +  s  F (t ) .
a …(10)
 ks kt cs (c s + ct )   ct   1 
 − −   mus  − 
 mus ms ms ms   mus 

Neural Networks Predictors

In Neural Networks (NN), hidden units send an output
∂E1 ( t )
∆ W jk (t ) = −η + α ∆W jk (t − 1)
signal towards neurons in output layer (Fig. 3). ∂W jk (t ) .…(12)
Information is continuously propagated forward until an
output is produced. Structural and training parameters
of NN predictors are as follows: nI, 1; nH, 10; nO, 8; η , where η is learning rate, and α is momentum term. E2
0.25; α, 0.4; train sample, 80000000; and AF, Sigmoid. (t) is propagation error between hidden layer and input
layer. E1 (t) is error between output layer and hidden
Back Propagation Neural Network (BPNN) layer.
BPNN is most commonly used to update weights of
NNs. Weights between input layer and hidden layer are Radial Basis Neural Network (RBNN)
updated as RBNN, which model functions y(x) mapping x ∈ Rn
∂E 2 (t ) to y ∈ R, has one hidden layer as
∆Wij (t ) = −η + α∆Wij (t − 1) , …(11)
∂Wij (t ) m
f(x) = ∑ w jh j (x) , …(13)
Weights between hidden layer and output layer are j=1
updated as
526 J SCI IND RES VOL 68 JUNE 2009

nH

nO
x 1(t)

x 2(t)

x 3(t)

nI x4(t)
t
a1(t)
Input Layer

a2(t)

a3(t)

a4(t)

Output Layer

Bias +1 +1 Bias
Hidden Layer

: Linear neuron

: Non-linear neuron

Fig. 3—Schematic representations of NN predictor

where ϕ is monotonic function as for non negative

Model is linear in hidden layer to output weight numbers. Gaussian basis function so that transfer
(w j )mj=1 . Characteristic feature of RBNN is radial nature functions can be written as

of hidden unit transfer functions, (h j )j=1 , which depend

m 2
n (x k − c jk )
only on distance between input x and centre cj of each h j (x) = exp( − ∑ ), …(15)
k =1 2
r jk
hidden unit, scaled by a metric Rj,
Using Gaussian approximation, output network is
[ ]
h j (x) = ö (x − c j )T R −j 1(x − c j ) , …(14)
approx.
 YILDIRIM & ESKI: VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF CAR SUSPENSION SYSTEM USING ANN 527

(a) P oint 1 (b) P oint 2

1 .4 1

1 .2

Displacement, mm

mm
Disp la ce m en t [mm ]

]
0 .8

Disp la cem en t [mm

1

Displacement,
0 .8 0 .6

0 .6 0 .4
0 .4
0 .2
0 .2

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time Time, s
[Se cond] Time Time, s
[Se cond]
(c) P oint 3 (d) P oint 4
1 1 .4

1 .2

mm
Displacement, mm
Disp la ce m en t [mm ]

]
0 .8

Disp la cem en t [mm

1

Displacement,
0 .6 0 .8

0 .4 0 .6

0 .4
0 .2
0 .2

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
TimeTime,
[Se cond]
s TimeTime, s
[Se cond]
( ): Experimental, ( ): BPNN

Fig. 4—Displacement results of measure points on experimental suspension system using BPNN

(a) P oint 1 (b)

P oint 2
1 .4 1 .2
Displacement, mm

1 .2 1
mm
D isp la ce m en t [mm ]

D isp la ce m en t [mm ]

1
0 .8
Displacement,

0 .8
0 .6
0 .6
0 .4
0 .4

0 .2 0 .2

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
TimeTime, s]
[Se cond TimeTime, s ]
[Se c ond
(c) P oint 3 (d) P oint 4
1 1 .6
Displacement, mm

mm
D isp la ce m en t [mm ]

D isp la ce m en t [mm ]

0 .8
1 .2
Displacement,

0 .6
0 .8
0 .4

0 .4
0 .2

0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time,
Time s ]
[Se cond Time Time, s]
[Se c ond
( ): E x pe rim e nta l, ( ): R BN N

Fig. 5—Displacements results of measure points on experimental suspension system using RBNN
528 J SCI IND RES VOL 68 JUNE 2009

(a) Point 1 (b) P oint 2

10 6

2
2

m/s
8 5

Acceleration, m/s

Acce lera tion [m/s]

Acce leration [m/s]

2
2

Acceleration,
6 4

4 3

2 2

0 1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time,
Time s ]
[Second Time Time, s]
[Second
(c) Point 3 (d) P oint 4
7 6
2m/s2

6
5

2 2
m/s
Acce lera tion [m/s]

Acce lera tion [m/s]

Acceleration,

5
4

Acceleration,
4
3
3

2 2

1 1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time Time,
[Seconds] TimeTime, s]
[Second
( ): Experimental, ( ):BPNN

Fig. 6—Acceleration results of measure points on experimental suspension system using BPNN
Point 1 Point 2
10 (a) 6 (b)
Acceleration, 2m/s2

8 5
m/s
Acceleration [m/s]
Acceleration [m/s]

Acceleration, 2

6 4

4 3

2 2

0 1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
TimeTime,
[Second
s] TimeTime, s
[Second]

Point 3 Point 4
7 (c)
6
(d)
6
2 2
2

5
m/s
m/s

Acceleration [m/s
Accelera tion [m/s]

]
2

5
Acceleration,
Acceleration,

4 4

3 3
2
2
1

0 1
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Time Time,
[Seconds] Time Time,
[Second]
s
( ):Experimental, ( ): RBNN

Fig. 7—Acceleration results of measure points on experimental suspension system using RBNN
 YILDIRIM & ESKI: VIBRATION ANALYSIS OF CAR SUSPENSION SYSTEM USING ANN
Table 1—RMS errors for different NN predictors
Results Learning algorithm Max RMS error
Displacement BPNN 0.0935
RBNN 0.0001
Acceleration BPNN 0.1059
RBNN 0.0001
2
m n ( x k − c jk )
f ( x) = ∑ w j exp(− ∑ ).
j =1 k =1 r2
jk
where rj is radius vector of jth hidden unit. A direct
approach to model complexity issue is to select a subset
of centres from a larger set which, if used in its entirety,
would over fit the data.
Experimental and Simulation Approaches
Experimental and simulation results from a vehicle
suspension system are presented. Ride comfort is
examined by running test on a smooth surface road
providing ground at 90 km/h speed of system tyre.
Performance of BPNN and RBNN structures were
compared for finding robust NN predictor. Two
accelerometers were mounted on wheel axes that
measured wheel acceleration and displacement. Two
other accelerometers measured vehicle body
acceleration and displacement. BPNN and experimental
results of displacements obtained from four measuring
points on vehicle test rig (Fig. 4) show that BPNN
approach gives poor performance. RBNN proved to be
effective in analyzing vehicle suspension vibration and
achieve better performance than BPNN approach
(Fig. 5). Acceleration results of four points using BPNN
(Fig. 6) are not acceptable because of NN structure.
Root mean square errors (RMSE) variations after training
are given in Table 1. Studies indicated that RBNN
analyzer achieved superior performance because of radial
basis function (Fig. 7).
View publication stats
529
Conclusions
This paper presented design problem of a non-linear
hybrid car suspension system for ride quality using neural
network predictors. Quarter car suspension test-rig
model was a non-linear two degrees of freedom system
subject to excitation from random road profiles.
Performance of RBNN structure was found better than
that of BPNN structure. RBNN was used for its
advantages of rapid training, generality and simplicity over
feed-forward neural network. Thus, RBNN could be
employed for analyzing such systems in vehicle design
systems.
…(16)
Acknowledgement
Authors thank Scientific & Technological Research
Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) 105M224 for supporting
this project.
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