Regenerative Shock Absorber

Almost all the automobiles use shock absorbers to damp out the vibration experienced due to
invariably rough roads. The energy in the conventional shock absorbers gets dissipated as heat
and is not used in anyway. A regenerative electromagnetic shock absorber was designed,
fabricated and tested for the purpose of achieving energy recovery from shock absorbers, which
can be further used to achieve battery charging, especially having a high output performance in
off-road vehicles. Design and analysis of an electromagnetic energy regenerative shock absorber
which can efficiently recover the vibration energy wasted in vehicle suspension system with due
consideration to space limitations in commercial vehicles.
When a vehicle travels on rough road, vibrations are produced. These vibrations have not been
yet considered for energy recovery and are wasted through conversion into thermal energy.
Experiments have shown that at 90 km/h on good and average roads, 100-400 watts average
power is available to recover in the suspension system of a middle-size vehicle Middle-size
passenger vehicle requires 180 watt power to operate continuous loads like ignition, fuel
injection and 260 watt power to operate prolonged loads like side & tail lights, head light main
lamp etc. Total power requirement of vehicle to operate its electrical components sum out to be
180 to 440 watts. If all the available vibration energy is recovered, it is possible to use
regenerative shock absorber to charge the battery of vehicle, instead of alternator. Thus alternator
load on vehicle engine can be decreased or removed completely. If say 3% of fuel efficiency of
vehicle is improved by this energy recovery scheme, by considering number of vehicles in world,
huge amount of fuel can be saved. Thus energy recovery from suspension system is necessary to
reduces fuel consumption.

Using the value of k as 1.2*105 N/m and supporting vehicle mass approximately 1000 kg;
Basic Work flow of RSS
 Polymer gears can be used for rack and pinion arrangement to make the system
lightweight.
 The number of rack and pinion gear arrangements can be increased for bulkier
suspension systems.
 This system can be integrated along with the Kinetic Energy Restoration System (KERS)
to boost acceleration.
 The ratio of the screw leads can be adjusted to meet the different requirement of damping
ratio between stretching and compression progress, which can obtain a superior shock
absorption effect and better ride comfort.
 The commercialization process of the proposed regenerative shock absorber needs to be
paid attention to reduce costs, improve performance.